MAY DAYS MUSIC BOX ~

compiled by bob arnold may 2014

ONCE MORE, THE LOWDOWN ~

The Lowdown
edited by Robert M. Zoschke
Street Corner Press
PO Box 38
Ellison Bay, WI. 54210

One more year is greeted come spring by Robert Zoschke's cornucopia eye and arms surrounding poets and artists and a life he must embrace by making one more anthology. The poets and writers involved are too many to list. There is a center showpiece all sweet home Chicago. Colorful swinging heart paintings, touches of other art, retrospectives and tributes, all for the sake of the song. Here's the cover, here's the back cover. The rest is up to you.

TOOLS ~

Popular Woodworking Books
 www.popuarwoodworking.com

Lost Art Press, 2013
lostartpress.com



Here are two attractive books of functioning elegance — how to dream and how to put those dreams through grit, mud, sharpness, and shavings — making it smooth. 

Understanding the weight of the hand, the weight of a tool.

RUSSELL EDSON ~

Russell Edson

1935 ~ 2014

The poetry reading by Russell Edson, almost 10 years ago, might have been the finest poetry reading I ever turned up at. This formal affair for poetry is for the birds, so showing up and catching an act like Mr. Edson, who looked like he was just showing up, was two-for-one outstanding.

A slight man, a stooped man, a great sort of kidder on the stage, taking nothing about his reading seriously and having for himself a grand old time since the audience was glad to join along with him in taking nothing seriously, so if you know his poems, and prose poems, you can just imagine what sort of delicious madcap cookie was made at this reading.

First he was nervous and resistant, then he was welcomed by the audience and he welcomed back the audience, then we couldn't get him off the stage.

It helped the reader tremendously that the audience was mainly young men, maybe one or two with a girlfriend, but for the most part it was a male thing and none seemed familiar with Russell Edson's poetry and that fit right into his hands to bring them into his chaos and adventure. It was like watching a child holding a loaded shotgun.

We weren't in a basement, but it looked an awful lot like where The Beatles when they first started out in Liverpool at The Cavern. Dungeon lighting. It could have even been stone escarpment walls, low ceiling, everybody snorting and hooting and naturally enough Edson is rolling out one of his poems about an ape.

You had to be there. We won't be any more.

[ BA ]

an interview with Russell Edson ~
 http://mipoesias.com/

LANGUAGE POEM ~

LANGUAGE POEM


We finished watching the first fucking season of Deadwood and
 before starting in on watching more cocksuckers in that fucking
 show, I just wanted you to know that by watching the fucking thing
 it hasn't affected my articulating prowess or range of fucking
 speech therapy in the fucking least. Have you seen any change,
 you cocksucker?

[ BA ]

DENNIS SCHMITZ ~

Before the Coming of Winter



I counted the shapes

of my face on the dying

leaves


& was never cheated


choose my body too

empty the trees

onto their shadows


I want to be lean & tough

as a fir

& float across the snow

in green

like an enormous flame







 
The Fishing



 
the leaves were knee-

deep

around the elms &

inside the stream

the fish

flashed like spears

at the feathers

of the hook

dreaming of birds.

on the bank in the solid


air

the rod looked

like a spear in the sun

overhead a hawk

lay on top the air

like a leaf

lifted up by the stream








 
There Is No Sound




 
there is no sound in the halls

of a flower

the slow pollen snowing

even a bee will not whisper

when he enters

the sacred pollen

under his wings

blows to the walls







The Wounded Doe



steps out of the green

& yellow handsful

of leaves still on the trees

her soft ears


tremble like butterflies


berries are crushed

against her coat

            &

her wet breath crumbles

white

on her muzzle


all the bones of her body

are braced

against her teeth


& I am so close


I can hear the slow







Self-Portrait



I have ancestors of Dresden

the wet

bricks of Amsterdam

my head is round & the hair

polished black

I squint

& will not look into your face

the eye of a man

is round & the center opens

into his head



_________________

DENNIS SCHMITZ
We Weep for Our Strangeness (Big Table, 1969)

Dennis Schmitz lives in Sacramento and has been a teacher in colleges and universities most of his life. One of his students was Raymond Carver. Born and raised in Iowa in the month of the lion 1937. You'd be hard pressed to find a contemporary American poet so well respected by other poets and his books so little known.

    Books of Poems ~

    Animism (Oberlin College Press, 2014)
    The Truth Squad (Copper Canyon Press, 2002)
    About Night: Selected and New Poems (Oberlin College Press, 1993)
    Eden (University of Illinois Press, 1989)
    Singing (Ecco Press, 1985)
    String (Ecco Press, 1980)
    Goodwill, Inc (1976)
    Double Exposures (1971)
    We Weep for Our Strangeness (1969)

ANIMALS 2 ~

INSTRUCTION ~

Buffy Sainte-Marie shows Pete Seeger

PETE SEEGER, FOREVER ~

Just to say all things must pass but some things must not be forgotten ~

here's a fine personal memoir by Bud Courtney about Pete Seeger

 I came across while reading the other night

and I thought best to share

~ carry on

ANIMALS ~

A female red fox by German photographer Klaus Echle. He spent months in Germany's Black Forest to catch this shot.

BOYS ~

Steps

 

So my friend Mike in Arkansas

has two young boys and one

was walking through their

house one day, age 6, and

he saw my son's book on the

table Mike had bought and on

the cover is a color photograph

of my son when he was 4 years old

holding a guitar already like a pro

walking out of the woods and

Mike's son Owen pondered the

cover photograph and asked,

"How did that kid write a book?"

And his father told him, 

"One page at a time." 



 ___________

Bob Arnold

THE DINER ~

When passing next through Oklahoma — Norman to be specific —

 do yourself a favor and stop for breakfast or lunch at "The Diner."

Locals are devoted to the spot

which also includes at least one poet

 J.D. Whitney

 tucked away at the long counter on one of the stools.

See if you can find J.D.

Then order a bowl of Claire's chili.

MAY DAY ~

Dear J,

I hope I wrote to you about all the fine books, all sizes, you mailed here earlier in the spring? I think we're all trying to forget the past winter, even though many spring days still feel like winter. Really it was just Vermont being Vermont.


One of the surest signs of spring was seeing the lumber order arrive up the frozen rutted driveway hill road, a bright and sparkling affair. Then lugging it all on the shoulder up the woods road to the faraway cottage 5 at a time. Build all day for 7 days straight. I got lucky, because the winter broke that week — peepers came out, the river charged, firewood left its mean-streak and became footloose and friendly, we've kept burning daily but it's no longer about holding off from freezing to death.


At the same time we worked away on all the new Longhouse book titles, which are stacking up winter-into-spring as a fancy handful. Soon enough I'll be sending these to you.


We're now in book sale season which means rising at 3AM to drive long distances to a dark and desolate region, pitch black, to set our cardboard box down into a forming line of book dealers (who arrive the day before with their boxes) so we have a halfway decent chance of getting our eyes onto some books when the sale begins 4 hours later. Now, we try to find some place open in a college town where we can get warm. Maybe a drug store, how about the hotel lobby, or the bakery, where we see movement behind the windows and two young workers decide to keep the door unlocked. Only ghosts could be walking in. Sure enough, we walk in.
  

The other day we visited Layla and Carson and Jocelyn. The young and scrappy couple are at their wits end with zero money. It all goes to nasty bills. Everyone is fine but dead tired with no sleep due to baby love . . . who sleeps little through the night, just like Carson was at the same age. We understand, nod, show them we lived that way once and here we are still alive. They will survive. We took a long hike through the woods of their region (Newfane) on hilly back road and Carson pushed Layla in a newly minted gift stroller from a relative and Susan and I tagged along taking care of his big dog "Pilot." That hike did a world of good for us all. Up through spread quiet farmland with ancient homes — some old mansions, some old shacks — very Vermont egalitarian. Jocelyn couldn't come; she'd been stuck all day at home, maybe for a few days, and tonight she was hired to cater a party with others for extra bucks and tips. Anyway it takes.


Just like you've been living. We're all but a raccoon out on the ice
stay well, Bob 

drawing © bob arnold

STEWART BRAND ~

This is a meditative book unlike any I know, and the title isn't just true, but could be extended to: How people learn (or don't).

Common sense essays spun from personal experience by the creator of The Whole Earth Catalog. Even if you already know everything — you'd be a fool to miss out on reading through this wise book.

POSTCARD 38 ~

ROUNDUP!

John Hubley at UPA Studios, Burbank, California

A legendary animation director he cast his own
 children as voice actors in his films. 

Amongst many other things John Hubley
created the cartoon character Mr. Magoo.
He based the figure on one of his uncles.

photo 1952 by Bob Willoughby

TOM RUSSELL: CRUCIFIX IN A DEATH HAND (CHARLES BUKOWSKI) ~

Crucifix In A Deathhand

yes, they begin out in a willow, I think
the starch mountains begin out in the willow
and keep right on going without regard for
pumas and nectarines
somehow these mountains are like
an old woman with a bad memory and
a shopping basket.
we are in a basin. that is the
idea. down in the sand and the alleys,
this land punched-in, cuffed-out, divided,
held like a crucifix in a deathhand,
this land bought, resold, bought again and
sold again, the wars long over,
the Spaniards all the way back in Spain
down in the thimble again, and now
real estaters, subdividers, landlords, freeway
engineers arguing. this is their land and
I walk on it, live on it a little while
near Hollywood here I see young men in rooms
listening to glazed recordings
and I think too of old men sick of music
sick of everything, and death like suicide
I think is sometimes voluntary, and to get your
hold on the land here it is best to return to the
Grand Central Market, see the old Mexican women,
the poor . . . I am sure you have seen these same women
many years before
arguing
with the same young Japanese clerks
witty, knowledgeable and golden
among their soaring store of oranges, apples
avocados, tomatoes, cucumbers -
and you know how
these
look, they do look good
as if you could eat them all
light a cigar and smoke away the bad world.
then it's best to go back to the bars, the same bars
wooden, stale, merciless, green
with the young policeman walking through
scared and looking for trouble,
and the beer is still bad
it has an edge that already mixes with vomit and
decay, and you've got to be strong in the shadows
to ignore it, to ignore the poor and to ignore yourself
and the shopping bag between your legs
down there feeling good with its avocados and
oranges and fresh fish and wine bottles, who needs
a Fort Lauderdale winter?
25 years ago there used to be a whore there
with a film over one eye, who was too fat
and made little silver bells out of cigarette
tinfoil. the sun seemed warmer then
although this was probably not
true, and you take your shopping bag
outside and walk along the street
and the green beer hangs there
just above your stomach like
a short and shameful shawl, and
you look around and no longer
see any
old men.





___________________________

Charles Bukowski

LYDIA DAVIS ~

Lydia Davis

Can't and Won't

( Farrar, 2014 )

Newly published, but her "collected stories" is the one to own

ROBIN PRICE ~

Once In Vermont Films

Once In Vermont Films © bob arnold

 

 

SONIA SANCHEZ ~

Back Road Chalkies

Sonia Sanchez

photo © bob arnold

AFTER THEY DIE, SHERPAS AWAKEN ~

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/23/world/asia/sherpas-delay-everest-climbs-in-labor-fight.html?hp



http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/25/world/asia/climbers-leave-everest-amid-regrets-and-tensions-among-sherpas.html?hp

nytimes