JOSE ANGEL VALENTE ~

Cover painting by Henri Michaux

please move the screen left to right



Jose Angel Valente
Landscape With Yellow Birds
Archipelago Books 2013

JOY WILLIAMS ~

Joy Williams

Speaks to The Paris Review (but a taste).

I read this in a bookshop cafe, actual copy, off the shelf, book in hand.

Highly recommend.

http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6303/the-art-of-fiction-no-223-joy-williams

POSTCARD 46 ~

The most famous road sign

 

GREAT STORYTELLER ~

Jean Shepherd

at WOR

"Jean Parker Shepherd (July 26, 1921 – October 16, 1999) was an American raconteur, radio and TV personality, writer and actor who was often referred to by the nickname Shep.

With a career that spanned decades, Shepherd is best known to modern audiences for the film A Christmas Story (1983), which he narrated and co-scripted, based on his own semi-autobiographical stories."

http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/4cc30a-memories-of-fenway-park

http://archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22Jean%20Shepherd%22

WESTWARD THOREAU ~

Gosh, what an ugly looking book. Your hand might not want to reach for it, but you should, the reading is a delight from both Henry David Thoreau's own time when he traveled by train in 1861 (one year before his untimely death) with young Horace Mann, Jr. (also an early fatality) from Massachusetts to Minnesota and back, to the 21st century author Corinne Hosfeld Smith's charmed and friendly prose. She's a librarian from Paxton, Massachusetts and I want to imagine an ideal one. She has much the same vigor, humor and hankering for detail that Thoreau had and she shares it throughout this sturdy portrait and study. This is the longest and least known of the Thoreau's excursions, which included up and in and around New England and the American Northeast, Canada (Quebec), Maine Woods and Cape Cod. As Thoreau scholar Laura Dassow Walls shares in her excellent introduction, "Walking became a form of thinking, which took shape as writing — he (Thoreau) once remarked that the length of his walks marked the length of his journal entries — and in his second essay, "A Walk to Wachusett," he wrote that "the landscape lies far and fair within, and the deepest thinker is the farthest travelled."

Go west, young man.

___________________

Westward I Go Free:

tracing Thoreau's last journey

Corinne Hosfeld Smith

Green Frigate Books, 2012

greenfrigatebooks.com 

 

ICEHOUSES ~

Another lovely slight of hand primer from a British press that showcases the humble and forgotten old architecture of thatch roof and stone structures with full elegance, at under 60 pages, and you walk away from the reading fully enriched.

Shire Books, UK, 2014

BIRTHDAY GIRL! ~

Back Road Chalkies 9 July 2014

Chalkie created 5:30 AM barely enough light for a photograph

WANTED MAN ~

Bob Dylan with his first wife Sara poking her head out the door — there are some terrific Dylan oddities packed in here, including this great cover photograph, which if I recall correctly was inspired by a Bobby Vee album jacket, or maybe the other way around? Plus an interview with Eric Clapton setting down the rule of law, followed by one with Ron Wood, a look at some of Dylan's cinema work, Johnny Cash also chimes in, as does Joe Boyd re Newport '65. The Girl From the North Country (Jaharana Romney) fills us in. D.A. Pennebaker, Paul Williams, Allen Ginsberg, Raymond Foye, Leonard Cohen, Roy Orbison, Daniel Lanois — it's quite a cast.

Wanted Man

In search of Bob Dylan

edited by John Bauldie

Citadel Underground,1991

MASAOKA SHIKI / DONALD KEENE ~

Spring breezes —

How'd I'd love to throw a ball

Over a grassy field.

After killing

The spider, what loneliness —

The cold of night.

Trampling through

Insect cries, I create

A path through the fields.

Columbia, 2013

Donald Keene

Masaoka Shiki (1867 ~ 1902)

haiku / tanka master

cover self portrait watercolor
translations by Burton Watson
 

baseball lover; prolonged spinal illness

the last 7 years of Shiki's life were confined to his sickbed

when he wrote the majority of his work

leaving behind at his death at 35

22 volumes of writing

each book is 500 pages long

Shiki is buried in the cemetery of Tairyu-ji

a temple in the Tabata Section of Tokyo

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2013/09/28/books/book-reviews/biography-of-masaoka-shiki-excels-in-the-expanded-details/#.U7C8qKge4pQ

HEY, YOU!

drawing © bob arnold

ANOTHER JULY ~

"another july"

music compiled by bob arnold

2014

UNDERGROUND USA ~

Once In Vermont Films 2014  © bob arnold

OX HEAD PRESS ~

the soulful memoirs of a small press artisan

HANDMADE HOUSES ~

A fine combination of homes and locations situated by architects, or definitely wanting nothing to do with the influence of an architect. Full color and full crafted. Not quite as wood-edged and maverick as Lloyd Kahn's tall, glossy masterwork volumes (ie., Tiny Homes; Home Work etc.) but on the same tool belt.

Cabin of Howard Waite, built with Rufus Blunk, from Handmade Homes, 1973

photo: Nancy Waite

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-olsen/most-beautiful-handmade-h_b_1464514.html

COLLECTED RON PADGETT ~

Ron Padgett
Collected Poems
Coffee House Books, 2013

The Love Cook

 

Let me cook you some dinner.  
Sit down and take off your shoes  
and socks and in fact the rest  
of your clothes, have a daiquiri,  
turn on some music and dance  
around the house, inside and out,  
it’s night and the neighbors  
are sleeping, those dolts, and  
the stars are shining bright,  
and I’ve got the burners lit  
for you, you hungry thing.

Here's the whole house, and the kitchen sink, but not the collaborations with others, nor as I recall the fine translations. I am reading a borrowed copy. But I am reading and reading and reading. And happy to say the book is as impressive as it looks.

RACHEL CARSON ~

Rachel Carson

http://www.rachelcarson.org/

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jun/24/insecticides-world-food-supplies-risk

BACK TO THE MAN CAVE (POSTCARD 44 ~)

Ireland, 1976

Men taking care of things

photograph by Josef Koudelka

JUNE BUG ~

compiled by Bob Arnold June 2014

WHERE CID AND ORIGIN BEGAN ~

"Corman’s old house, 51 Jones Avenue, remains. It’s a duplex now, located at the end of the street, one side only retains the number 51 address, that place from where Corman sent out the copy of those early printings of Origin, the pages filled with writing by Creeley, Olson, Levertov and others."

— Kevin Bowen

photo: Keven Bowen

http://jacket2.org/article/reclaiming-corman

BUCKET OF RAIN ~

After many gorgeous days in a row, good old June, we had almost five inches of rain overnight.

Oh how the wind blew, the dark clouds mounted, almost covering

hidden valley, and the rain came. We left a bucket out overnight

and a wheelbarrow

and the wheelbarrow nearly filled —

saved for the flowers

newly planted

drawing 2014  © bob arnold