DRAGONFLY ~

Back Road Chalkies

photo © bob arnold

PATRIZIA CAVALLI ~

Two hours ago I fell in love

and trembled, one tremble still,

and haven't a clue whom I should tell.

(translated by Mark Strand)







Don't count on my imagination, no,

don't count on that, I won't preserve you,

won't put you on the shelf till winter,

I'll open you now and swallow you whole. 

(trans. Geoffrey Brock)








Just hearing a verb

that sounds true to me

I feel my blood spurting

towards salvation. Like coming home

and finding the merciful fresh sheet.

(trans. David Shapro & Gini Alhadeff)







Oh really, she's with somebody?

So she's with somebody.

Is she really with somebody?

I guess she's with somebody.

So she is actually with somebody?

Well then, she is, she's with somebody,

so you're saying she's with somebody?

Okay, then, she's with somebody.

(trans. Mark Strand & Gini Alhadeff)







Here I am, I do my bit,

though I don't know what that may be.

If I did I could at least let go of it

and free of it be free of being me.

(trans. Gini Alhadeff)







Lame pigeon. Ridiculous

lame crooked pigeon.

When they have defects animals

suddenly resemble humans.

(trans. Gini Alhadeff)







How sweet it was yesterday imagining I was a tree!

I had almost rooted in one place

and grew in sovereign slowness there.

I took the breeze and the north wind,

caresses, blows — what difference did it make?

I was neither joy nor torment to myself,

I couldn't detach myself from my own center,

no decisions, no movement:

if I moved it was because of the wind.

(trans. Jonathan Galassi)







It's all so simple, yes, it was so simple,

it is so clear I almost can't believe it.

Here's what the body is for: you touch me or you don't touch me,

you hold me or send me away. The rest is for lunatics.

(trans. Gini Alhadeff)

Cavalli was born 1947 in Todi Umbria and resides today in Rome. 
She has published six collections of poems. 


______________________

Patrizia Cavalli
My Poems Won't Change the World
(Farrar 2013)

DAN SNOW ~

Dan Snow is a New England builder of stone walls and stone structures, also well known in the British Isles where he has practiced his trade.

This is the second of his two books on the trade, lush with landscape photographs from job sites, and both books are mandatory reading for the stone crazed one, builder of anything, seeker of the improved spot on earth.

ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME INDUCTION 2014 ~

It wasn't going anywhere until Cat Stevens showed up and sounded like he had never left. The sincerity he spoke of his mother, and then his father, was quite moving in the supposed hotbed of sex drugs and youknowwhat. Then there was too much Springsteen, but a deserving nod to his spirited E Street Band. Finally, we got to a beat-up and perfect tribute to Nirvana, with its rainshadowy songs sung by a crew of women musicians from Joan Jett (right on the money) to a stage flopping Kim Gordon in a great dress & shiny boots, oz-haired Annie Clark, and closing with pink suited New Zealander, Lorde.

 That made me look toward Monday.

annie clark

JIM RINGER ~

Jim Ringer

Go out any where now, I dare you — cityscape, small town, village, pathway, dirt road byway, alley, bike path, motorboat, jet ski, swimming wharf, canoe, park bench, work field, train car, train rail, train yard, foyer, hallway, elevator, stairway, windowsill, schoolyard, parking lot, driveway, grass levee, and you're likely to see, now or one day soon, the people and presence of everything said and sung in this song.

 I can't imagine anyone singing this song as well as Jim Ringer.

Born 29 February 1936, Yell County, Arkansas, USA, d. 17 March 1992, California, USA. In the mid-40s Ringer’s family fled the poverty-wracked Ozarks in hope of a better life elsewhere. After a brief stay in Oklahoma, the family settled in Clovis, California. From his parents, Ringer learned folk songs and traditional music. By this time he could play guitar and he also sang. In his teenage years Ringer drifted, got into trouble with the law, and later married, had two children and then separated from his wife. He played and sang folk and bluegrass, working in bars around Berkeley and Fresno and he also toured for a period with an ad hoc folk band. He then settled into a job at Sweet’s Mill, a folk music camp near Fresno, California, where he was with Kenny Hall And The Sweet’s Mill String Band. This was in the early 70s, which is when he also made his recording debut with both Hall’s band and under his own name. Also at this time, he signed with Philo Records and met singer-guitarist-songwriter Mary McCaslin. From the mid-70s, Ringer and McCaslin worked together, she was also a Philo recording artist, and they married in 1978.

Among songs Ringer composed are ‘Waitin’ For The Hard Times To Go’, which has been recorded by the Nashville Bluegrass Band, ‘Open Door At Home’, ‘Good To Get Home’, ‘Rachel’, ‘Tramps And Hawkers’, the latter recorded by Tom Russell, ‘The Band Of Jesse James’, ‘Dusty Desert Wind’, ‘Tulsa’, ‘Linda’s On Her Own’, ‘Still Got That Look’, ‘Any Old Wind’ and ‘Rank Stranger’. In the early 80s, Ringer switched labels but although his first release for Flying Fish Records gained cult status his career was undergoing a difficult time. So too was his marriage and by the end of the decade he and McCaslin had separated. Ringer’s health was poor and he had a serious problem with alcohol. After the divorce, he returned to Fresno, apparently making no more appearances during the last few years of his life, although he did compose at least one song during this period, ‘If I Don’t Miss You’, which McCaslin would later record.

The Encyclopedia of Popular Music by Colin Larkin

BOBBY BYRD ~

You don't go wrong with Bobby Byrd

Otherwise, My Life Is Ordinary

Bobby Byrd

Cinco Puntos Press, 2014

701 Texas Avenue

El Paso, Texas

79901




EDITOR


On page 84 of Bobby Byrd's new book of poems

Otherwise, My Life Is Ordinary
 
I notice while reading a poem

about George Bush that Bobby

spells the name of Katharine Hepburn

as "Kathyrn Hepburn" —

he does it not once, but twice

I say to myself, "Now what's going on here?"

I'm sure but I google anyway because I can

and sure enough I'm right and Bobby is wrong

but I don't plan to say a word to him

or else he'll think I think his book is wrong

and all this book is is right


[ BA ]

ANIMALS 3 ~

florida panther

LANDSCAPE & LITERATURE OF SCOTLAND ~

Land Lines

 an illustrated journey through the 

landscape and literature of Scotland

photographs by Marius Alexander and Paul Basu

Edinburgh University Press, 2001

OLAV H. HAUGE ~

The Everyday




The great storms

are behind you now.

Back then you never asked

why you were or

where you came from, where you were going,

you were simply a part of the storm,

the fire.

But it's possible to live

in the everyday as well,

the quiet gray day,

to plant potatoes, rake leaves,

or haul brush.

There's so much to think about here in this world,

one life's not enough.

After work you can roast pork

and read Chinese poetry.

Old Laertes cleared brambles

and hoed around his fig trees,

and let the heroes battle it out at Troy.








Erratic Boulder




What an extraordinary place

to settle on,

on a ledge, poised

on the brink.

Don't you value your own success?







Let Me Be Like the Dung Beetle




Sorrow has settled over me

and weighs me down in a warm straw bed.

Let me at least move,

test my strength, lift this slab of sod —

let me be like the dung beetle

in spring when it digs itself out from the dung heap.







Poem




If you can make a poem

a farmer finds useful,

you should be happy.

A blacksmith you can never figure out.

The worst to please is a carpenter.







This Is the Dream




This is the dream we carry through the world

that something fantastic will happen

that it has to happen

that time will open by itself

that doors shall open by themselves

that the heart will find itself open

that mountain springs will jump up

that the dream will open by itself

that we one early morning

will slip into a harbor

that we have never known.

[RB]







Not By Car, Not By Plane 




Not by car,

not by plane —

by neither haysled

nor rickety cart

— or even by Elijah's chariot!

You'll never get farther than Basho.

He got there by foot.







Animal Grave




Just a hollow

in the ground now,

sunk down,

stones have covered it over,

earth and leaves

have filled it

in.

You pause a moment,

it's hardly

worth noticing,

a deer hoof

would barely

trip over it

— not now. 







Mountains Don't Attract Me Anymore




The mountains don't attract me anymore.

I've lived long enough between cold snowfields.

I will find my way in the woods, listen

to fall wind, and stop at the frozen ponds,

engage with streams. Even late in the year

you can find good berries there.

You have to cross mountains if that's not enough.

Peaks stand there, so you know where you are.


[RB] 







How Long Did You Sleep?




Dare you do this —

open your eyes

and look around?

Yes, you're here

here in this world,

you're not dreaming,

it's just as

you see it, things here

are like this.

Like this?

Yes, just like this,

not otherwise.

How long did you sleep?







I Pass the Arctic Circle




A man on the train points out the cairn on the mountain.

We're passing the Arctic Circle, he says.

At first we don't see any difference,

to the north the land looks the same,

but we know where we're headed.

I wouldn't have noticed this little event

if I hadn't, one of these days, passed seventy.





______________________________

 OLAV H. HAUGE
(Norway 1904~1994)

The Dream We Carry

selected and Last Poems
translated by Robert Bly and Robert Hedin
Copper Canyon Press 2008


All translations above by Robert Hedin except where noted "RB" [Robert Bly]


 

 

NEW ! MALCOLM RITCHIE ~

Malcolm Ritchie

small lines on the great earth


Longhouse 2014

ISBN 978-1-929048-21-2

112 pages

ORDER NOW!
By credit card, check
or
with easy to use Paypal ~

Choose US order or International order

US Orders, postpaid $17.00 USD    International  postpaid $30.00 USD

 

$15.00
 plus $2.00 shipping (USA)

For International orders, shipping is $22 air

email: poetry@sover.net

AH, GOOD OL' VERMONT ~

longhouse : land of poetry

POSTCARD 40 ~

Buffalo Bill Cody

1846-1917

Hunter, scout, Indian fighter, showman; 

Buffalo Bill romanticized the West in his Wild West Show

that toured through Eastern U.S. and Europe. This photo

of the colorful character was taken in

El Paso in 1915 by the Feldman Studio.

SO YOU THINK YOU HAD A BAD DAY ~

JOHN ALL
Mountain climber, scientist



http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/24/injured-climber-films-life-or-death-climb-out-of-nepal-crevasse

LEGENDS ~

drawings © bob arnold

But where are the snows of yester-year?  — François Villon

Let's talk a moment about this last long winter. There are a few things to be said.

I was recently in attendance at an early morning book sale in a small Vermont town. Geraniums nodding out in the front of the building with the sun, not selling and maybe too expensive, but it was a plant sale nonetheless and the mainly elderly women who were working well at it had modest hopes everything would go well. If I wanted to contribute to that thought, I was welcome.

But how long was the winter we had all just passed through?

I heard it spelled out by three old women talking as they rustled books for the sale onto a table with one already lamenting, "I have so little time to read. When do you both have the time?"

One woman stayed silent while the other jumped on her high horse. "My goodness, after this past winter and how looonngg it was, it was the perfect time to read books. And I did. Plenty!"

That pretty much buttoned up and nailed down the thought, constant on the country dweller's mind, of 'where is the time?'

The New York Times, and our governor, tell us that there is so much time and so much boredom and so much unemployment in the back hills of Vermont that the only remedy amongst the constituents is to get yourself addicted to heroin. Forget books. Trees. Cows. Fields. Mountains and rivers without end. Become a junkie.

Our old ladies weren't part of this. That was another Vermont. But it could easily be their neighbors.

By the way, where are the young women, never mind the young men and the young people in general at these plant and book sales? Are there no longer mothers and grandmothers nabbing their grandchildren by the ear lobes and dragging them at the crack of dawn to work over these grand socialist community events? Books for a dollar or so, plants all bright and rain revived, packed into the school where they went to school. It all seems part and parcel to how one should grow up. Assist where you have been. Assist what once assisted you.

For a short piece of our long winter we did watch, like clockwork, each Sunday, our fill of cherry pie "Downton Abbey". We enjoyed it while watching, and even talked it up after each episode with two neighbors we would meet on our daily hikes in the woods along the river, but overall this past year's series was uneventful. Forgettable. Dry toast. No pie.

Which then got us hooked into the legend of "Game of Thrones." One should have an opposite of the Downton cycle just for measuring the imagination and the mind, keep the juices flowing, enjoy some spunk. Not quite resorting to pornography, however "Game of Thrones" almost is. I like the dwarf Tyrion (the most expressive face) and I like the Hound (another face) and I didn't like at all Ned Stark losing his head since he remains the only champion in all the lot, but then there's Jamie, who is cute (until he cut off all his hair) and it doesn't seem to matter that he had his good sword hand chopped off — remember, he's cute. And how in the world I returned to even having any care for the guy after he pushed the little kid out of the tower window — yes, yes, I realize Jamie was in the throes of sexual orgasm with his sister when the little kid stuck his face into the room, but still, a little kid? pushing him to his death? Except the kid didn't die since we're in a fantasy, and in a fantasy you can get away with any damn thing you please. It isn't a book sale where 50% of the books are junk and heading to the dump. The real life dump.

I also like the very tall and noble and hair cropped blond knight in shining armor who I've never paid attention to get the name of. For me she's the-tall-tall-woman-good-with-a-sword. Who bonded with Jamie, and she's the next best thing to Ned Stark when it comes to honor and grace. She better not lose her head.

Today honor loses its head. We fail to realize and understand that we are, often against our best intentions, becoming the very worst of our abilities because of the company we keep. The company that has been given to us. The company we have accepted. The company we've even rejected. The company we have become. Be careful when watching any t.v. And the very best portion of a book is you can talk back to the book, close it up and put it down and take a walk, there's a reflective depth and quiet between you both as you make your rounds. You know the book is set on the table waiting for you to return. You can see it. There is a still life resonance. A book on a screen is just another t.v. Try to make your encounters reciprocal. Nice try creators of the fine film "Her" — but a girl in the hand isn't better than one in the bush.

As Sweetheart says about "Game of Thrones" television creators — not to be confused with the old fart in New Mexico stirring up in his cauldron the big, fat books the television show pulls its magic from — "It's 20 and 30 year olds writing this stuff, any thing goes."

Yes, while another Spring has come.

[ BA ]

A once upon a time book sale crew

STEVE SANFIELD ~

Back Road Chalkies
Steve Sanfield

may 2014 
photo © bob arnold

MANNY FARBER ~

The longer he is gone and the longer we have to endure film critics who have none of the independence and verve of a Manny Farber, the longer we miss his good eye and writing and the longer we return to his books. I like to find mine as I go along, adding them to my short shelf Manny Farber library.

Negative Space
Manny Farber on the Movies
expanded edition
Da Capo Press 1998

ALAN LAU ~

Alan Lau

Happy New Year of the Horse!

mail art we have been receiving from Alan and Kazuko for decades!