JONSERED ~

drawing © bob arnold

CAT ALMOST . . . ~

 

drawing © bob arnold 

DISCREET ~

"I was trying to make a piece that could be listened to and yet could be ignored."

BRIAN ENO

"In January this year (1975) I had an accident. I was not seriously hurt, but I was confined to bed in a stiff and static position. My friend Judy Nylon visited me and brought me a record of 18th century harp music. After she had gone, and with some considerable difficulty, I put on the record. Having laid down, I realized that the amplifier was set at an extremely low level, and that one channel of the stereo had failed completely. Since I hadn't the energy to get up and improve matters, the record played on almost inaudibly. This presented what was for me a new way of hearing music — as part of the ambience of the environment just as the colour of the light and the sound of the rain were parts of the ambience. It is for this reason that I suggested listening to the piece at comparatively low levels, even to the extent that it frequently falls below the threshold of audibility."

BRIAN ENO

Discreet Music ~ Brian Eno
Obscure Records 1975

THE BLACK BARTS OF THE WORLD ~

Philip Whalen (seated) and Gary Snyder

photograph by Harry Redl

http://thenewblackbartpoetrysociety.wordpress.com/2014/05/10/a-diamond-wired-for-sound-2/

TUCKED IN ~

Here's a little treasure we are tucking into mail and book order shipments from time to time —
 no charge, on the whim, by the day, no requests, you already deserve it

 

john martone

"nest"

dogwood & honeysuckle

illinois, 2000



  

STONER ~

This excellent essay by Steve Almond:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/11/magazine/you-should-seriously-read-stoner-right-now.html?ref=books


and


http://libinfo.uark.edu/specialcollections/findingaids/williamsje.html





Stoner
John Williams
New York Review of Books Classics, 2003
Viking Press, 1965

THE DYLANOLOGISTS ~

 FAN

"You don't know who I am, but I know who you are."

BOB DYLAN

"Let's keep it that way."

A curiously thin volume under 250 pages that balances between a well wrought biography of the

 musician — and the freaks, crazies and devoted who make him their own.

David Kinney

The Dylanologists
Adventures in the Land of Bob

Simon & Schuster 2014

YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA ~

     No-Good Blues

 

       1

 

I try to hide in Proust,
Mallarme, & Camus,
but the no-good blues
come looking for me. Yeah,
come sliding in like good love
on a tongue of grease & sham,
built up from the ground.
I used to think a super-8 gearbox
did the job, that a five-hundred-dollar suit
would keep me out of Robert Johnson's
shoes. I rhyme Baudelaire
with Apollinaire, hurting
to get beyond crossroads & goofer
dust, outrunning a twelve-bar
pulsebeat. But I pick up
a hitchhiker outside Jackson.
Tasseled boots & skin-tight
jeans. You know the rest.

       2

 

I spend winter days
with Monet, seduced
by his light. But the no-good
blues come looking for me.
It takes at least a year
to erase a scar
on a man's heart. I come home nights
drunk, the couple next door
to keep me company, their voices
undulating through my bedroom wall.
One evening I turn a corner
& step inside Bearden's Uptown Sunday Night Session. Faces
Armstrong blew from his horn
still hang around the Royal Gardens—all
in a few strokes, & she suddenly leans out of
a candy-apple green door & says,
Are you from Tougaloo?

 

       3

 

At the Napoleon House
Beethoven's Fifth draws shadows
from the walls, & the no-good blues
come looking for me. She's here,
her left hand on my knee.
I notice a big sign
across the street that says
The Slave Exchange.
She scoots her chair closer.
I can't see betrayal
& arsenic in Napoleon's hair—
they wanted their dying emperor
under the Crescent City's
Double Scorpio. But nothing
can subdue these African voices
between the building's false floors,
this secret song from the soil
left hidden under my skin.

 

       4

 

Working swing shift at McGraw-
Edison, I shoot screws
into cooler cabinets as if I were born
to do it. But the no-good blues come
looking for me. She's from Veracruz,
& never wears dead colors of the factory,
still in Frida Kahlo's world of monkeys.
She's a bird in the caged air.
The machines are bolted down
to the concrete floor,
everything moves with the same big
rhythm Mingus could get out of
a group. Humming the syncopation
of punch presses & conveyor belts,
work grows into our dance
when the foreman
hits the speed-up button
for a one-dollar bonus.

 

       5

 

My hands are white
with chalk at The Emporium
in Colorado Springs, but the no-good
blues come looking for me. I miscue
when I look up & see sunlight
slanting through her dress
at the back door. That shot
costs me fifty bucks.
I let the stick glide along the V
of two fingers, knowing men who
wager their first born to conquer
snowy roller coasters & myths.
I look up, just when
the faith drains out of
my right hand. It isn't
a loose rack. But more like—
well, I know I'm in trouble
when she sinks her first ball.

 

       6

 

I'm cornered at Birdland
like a two-headed man hexing
himself. But the no-good blues
coming looking for me. A prayer
holds me in place,
balancing this sequined
constellation. I've hopped boxcars
& thirteen state lines to where
she stands like Ma Rainey.
Gold tooth & satin. Rotgut
& God Almighty. Moonlight
wrestling a Texas-jack.
A meteor of desire burns
my last plea to ash. Blues
don't care how many tribulations
you lay at my feet, I'll go
with you if you promise
to bring me home to Mercy.

 ___________________

Yusef Komunyakaa

Testimony

a tribute to Charlie Parker

with new and selected jazz poems

(Wesleyan 2013)

SUGARING ~

Short poems by Bob Arnold that hike around the sugar bush
 with accompanied drawings by Jason Clark









$12.00

plus $2.50 shipping & handling

Buy now through easy-to-use Paypal

Choose US order or International order

US Orders, postpaid $14.50 USD    International  postpaid $22.00 USD

also:
http://vtartists.com/JWClark/

BOOKED ELOQUENCE ~

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/11/opinion/sunday/lost-booksellers-of-new-york.html?hp&rref=opinion&_r=0

nytimes

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY ~

A leopard cub plays with its mother in the Masai Mara, Kenya. The cub was spotted calling for its mother after getting stuck at the top of a tree. British photographer Margot Raggett took the picture while on safari there. 

A swallow feeds its babies in their nest under the ceiling of a residential house in Dongfeng township of Guiyang, Guizhou province, China. 

Photograph: Stringer/Reuters

Crocus flowers bloom on the slopes of Alp Zavragia in the Swiss canton of Grisons, Switzerland.
     Photograph: Arno Balzarini/EPA

from The Guardian UK

                                                                              

                                                                              

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