Friday, December 12, 2014

JIM KOLLER & PETER GARLAND SPEAK ~

Lato Selvatico "Libraria"
Strada Digagnola, 24
46027 Portiolo
Mantova
Bioregione Bacino Fluviale del Po
ITALY
morettig@iol.it
www.sentierobioregionale.org

November 2014

James Koller photograph: Maggie Brown
Peter Garland photograph: Esperanza Esquivel

Thursday, December 11, 2014

LEW WELCH ~

Back Road Chalkie

(indoors during ice storm/

power outage)

WALKING ~

Jim Koller w/ empty boxes, Bert Koller, Carson Arnold, Bob Arnold

circa 1986, Vermont

Jim was visiting with his family a few years after I built a house for a couple down this road and around the corner.

The couple had asked if I could come down and help them move a piano and I brought along a little army with me.

Susan was with us, too. She took the photograph.

http://crowstalktohim.blogspot.com/

photo © susan arnold

Wednesday, December 10, 2014

KIT KENNEDY ~

Back Road Chalkie

December 2014

K I T K E N N E D Y

http://wyndhambaird.bandcamp.com

"And if you don't like me, well, leave me alone"

Dylan should be just left alone. He pretty much says that, too. I've been enjoying watching him survive long enough to have a croaking voice, a young voice, a mellow voice at Newport (64), a cracking rocker's voice (Newport a year later: Maggie's Farm), his Judas period in Manchester with the audience, then the phony bike wreck, the mellow Lay Lady Lay, come back with The Band in NYC — jean jacket, good stare, handsome — then we wind down through the religious period, Wailing Wall, fucked up songs, good songs, Lenny etc. By the time he lands in Springfield, MA and we buy Jim Koller a ticket to meet us there for it (1992), Dylan can barely fill the seats.

We come into the dirty city and see Koller moving sideways up one of the sidewalks biding his time, maybe hitting a bar, at the concert our seats have rainwater on them and we go talk to the bosses who move us all almost to the front. Dylan in hood.

I meet another old friend there. I built his house five years earlier in the woods, he's wearing gloves in September, that jittery at being in the city and shaking hands, he shows me a little zippered pocket on the top of the gloves where he keeps change for panhandlers. He's well prepared. Country folk still come into the city like the settlers in Shane with an old wagon and a knock to the back wheel. Don't blame them.

Dylan makes one more comeback pretty much after the second Woodstock (nothing ever in Woodstock but all of Woodstock attends) and we meet up with one of his shows, again, this time up in the woods of Stratton Vermont and lo and behold Janine is in the audience, come over from Woodstock, and she'll follow the tour to the Woodstock event the next night. Stratton's obviously a warmup for Dylan and the band. I never heard "Rainy Day Woman" any better. He was on fire.

Years and years later we'll catch him again in Northampton at Smith College, 2000 in attendance, Allen Ginsberg has just died, Dylan has a huge portrait on a screen behind him on the stage of AG. Dylan in Stetson looking like a Jewish kid Bill Monroe. He can pull off anything he wants. We have balcony seats. We're catching a train that night from there to New Mexico.

In '75 we also saw Dylan and Rolling Thunder down in Hartford. Got there, November night, sleet storm, almost two hours from Vermont, and halfway there the windshield wipers bust on our VW bug that never had heat. To get home we had to wait for the storm to pass. No sleep. Youngsters. The best age for Dylan. Even for him. He's approaching that old blues singer voice now. He may, eventually, get side by side with Skip James. . .

. . .way back in the 60s Susan saw Dylan at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, his polka dot shirt period. Same time, same state, Koller's Coyote's Journal was growling.

Now to modern times — here is Wyndham Baird who gets at the very hard work at crossing generations, with quality, as is being done here. I don't put Wyndham at all in the momentary Dylan-doing-Woody Guthrie mode; it's more Ramblin' Jack Elliott-doing-Woody, and it's a toss up who did Woody songs best between those two. In Dylan's case NO ONE yet or ever will do Dylan better because it's all about the mystical which he has down as well as Blake.
Untouchable.

"Dark Eyes" all for Jim

image: by Alec Mcleod
Title from the Celtic song "The Moonshiner"

Tuesday, December 9, 2014

DONALD HALL STAR 80 ~

a new book this week. . .

SIMON PETTET ~

Simon Pettet

POEM ("can't get enough of that")

can't get enough of that
kora music
inscribing letters on a
full moon

each of the notes then
each of the letters
crystal clear
incised on the moon's cheek

absolute in a way
as she tumbles
(they tumble out)
onto the page

or into the sky
(that blanket of emptiness)
followed by cascades
(and shimmers)
of gold and black dust

and pinpoints of light

that's you

POEM ("You still here Franco. . .")

You still here Franco

where?

in your daughter's face

calling Franco in spirit world

can I come in? yes,

no.

you would have flipped over e mail!

POEM ("coyote howls on the crossroads")

coyote howls on the crossroads

crop dusters spew noxious vapors

as we speed by industrial chemical plants

and factories and prisons

and set out on to the open plains

are not wolves

(look in their eyes)

brother animals?

and should we not protect them?

as we supposedly (but hardly!) protect ourselves.

___________________

S I M O N P E T T E T

As A Bee

Talisman House, Publishers
P.O. Box 102
Northfield, MA 01360

photograph by John Sarsgard

Monday, December 8, 2014

MARTIN PARR ~

Martin Parr
Val Williams
Phaidon, 2014

http://nymag.com/thecut/2014/06/meet-the-totally-unorthodox-fashion-photographer.html

Sunday, December 7, 2014

JIM WILL REMEMBER ~

http://crowstalktohim.blogspot.com/

Saturday, December 6, 2014

ART OF BEING TUAREG, SAHARA NOMADS~

Art of Being Tuareg
Sahara Nomads in a Modern World
Cantor Center for Visual Arts
2006

KEHINDE WILEY ~

Kehinde Wiley

The World Stage Jamaica

Ekow Eshun

Stephen Friedman Gallery

2013

Three Boys

2013

http://kehindewiley.com/

Friday, December 5, 2014

EDWARD O. WILSON ~

Traditional turf cottage

Iceland

What will continue to evolve and diversify indefinitely are the humanities. If our species can be said to have a soul, it lives in the humanities.

Yet this great branch of learning, including the creative arts and their scholarly criticism, is still hampered by the severe and widely unappreciated limitations of the sensory world in which the human mind exists. We are primarily audiovisual and unaware of the world of taste and smell in which most of the millions of other species exist. We are entirely oblivious to the electrical and magnetic fields used by a few animals for orientation and communication. Even in our own world of sight and sound we are relatively close to blind and deaf, able to perceive directly no more than minute segments of the electromagnetic spectrum, nor the full range of compression frequencies that surge past us through earth, air, and water.

And that is just the start. Although the details of the creative arts are potentially infinite, the archetypes and instinct they are designed to exemplify are in reality very few. The ensemble of emotions that produce them, even the most powerful, are sparse — fewer in number than, say, the instruments of a full orchestra. Creative artists and humanities scholars by and large have little grasp of the otherwise continuum of space-time on Earth, in both its living and nonliving parts, and still less in the Solar System and the Universe beyond. They have the correct perception of Homo sapiens as a very distinctive species, but spend little time wondering what that means or why it is so.

Science and the humanities, it is true, are fundamentally different from each other in what they say and do. But they are complementary to each other in origin, and they rise from the same creative processes in the human brain. If the heuristic and analytic power of science can be joined with the introspective creativity of the humanities, human existence will rise to an infinitely more productive and interesting meaning.

E D W A R D O W I L S O N

The Meaning of Human Existence

Norton 2014

SEEING IS BELIEVING ~

Eric Garner in the deadly choke hold by #99

Officer Daniel Pantaleo

July 17, 2014 New York City

http://time.com/3016326/eric-garner-video-police-chokehold-death/

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/05/opinion/eric-garner-daniel-pantaleo-and-lethal-police-tactics.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=c-column-top-span-region&region=c-column-top-span-region&WT.nav=c-column-top-span-region

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/05/opinion/we-must-stop-police-abuse-of-black-men.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=c-column-top-span-region&region=c-column-top-span-region&WT.nav=c-column-top-span-region&_r=0

photo ~ Time Magazine

Thursday, December 4, 2014

HELEN VAN DONGEN ~

Helen van Dongen

I never had the pleasure to meet Helen van Dongen, though I used to see her making the rounds of Brattleboro, Vermont on foot, well into her 80s. She lived to be 97. Ever quiet. Humble. She couldn't hide the beauty nor that certain dignity. Over the years, as a book scout, I have come across many of the books from her private library, each one a corker. Dongen was married to leftist and John Reed friend, Kenneth Durant, who had been married to the poet Genvieve Taggard. Much of all their best work was done while in Vermont.

http://www.theguardian.com/news/2006/nov/10/guardianobituaries.obituaries

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

Wednesday, December 3, 2014

LOS ANGELES PLAYS ITSELF ~

Los Angeles Plays Itself

Directed by Thom Andersen

2003

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-on-film-copyright-protection-movies-20140727-story.html

Tuesday, December 2, 2014

BOLANO INTERVIEWS ~

Roberto Bolaño
a biography in conversations
Monica Maristain
Melville House, 2014

http://www.mhpbooks.com/books/bolano/

http://www.sampsoniaway.org/blog/2013/01/17/translating-bolano-an-interview-with-natasha-wimmer/

JAMES KOLLER UPDATE ~

Further Update 2 December 2014:

The Jim Koller family now have a blog of their own, and Bert Koller has sent a message. Please tie into this link for the family news on Jim.

"Please visit http://crowstalktohim.blogspot.com/ to join James Koller on his most recent journey.

Thank you so much.

Love, Bert"

Up Date on Jim Koller from his family — 2 December 2014 —


"Dear all,

   Thank you for your thoughts and prayers and concern.

   Jim remains unconscious. MRI imagery shows the severity of the damage to his brain from the stroke. Our observations are that Jim has almost no ability to move the right side of his body & has demonstrated almost no responsiveness. Doctors warn us that his ability to both speak & to process language is likely substantially impaired, and that he may have problems with vision & the ability to protect his airway. Pneumonia and his existing Parkinson's disease complicate the picture.

Jim's children and Maggie are either here or closely involved. He's well cared for and surrounded by love and kind attention. We're grateful in some way to find ourselves centrally located in the country, between Maine and California, Illinois and Arizona, and to have been on the road in a place with competent, compassionate, and kind medical professionals readily available.

Within the next few days we hope to create a blog on which to post further updates.

With love from Joplin, Missouri"

James Koller with his children
Thea, Ida Rose & Bert
circa 1988
w/ Carson Arnold
Vermont

_________________________

We just had word while coming in the door from a day away, no lights on yet, getting the wood fire re-lit, that old friend of the family Jim Koller had a massive stroke Friday night in Joplin, Missouri.

His son Bert Koller sent us the news from Maine, where Jim had left a few days earlier for the midwest to be with family members before heading to the southwest where there is more family, and wanting to be way west in California for even more family somewhere down the road this winter.

Jim has lots of family — children, grandchildren, and so many friends.

It's time to put head, hands and hearts together and send the man we love some of that love. Even if you don't know Jim you may one day know his poetry, Teton Sioux translations, stories, songs, chants, and charms.

The editor of Coyote's Journal is somewhere on the cusp tonight.

In the territory where Jesse and Frank James called home.

[BA]

29 Nov '14

"I'm writing you all to let you know that Jim had a stroke last night in Joplin, Missouri. He was also diagnosed with pneumonia. He is currently unable to communicate & the prognosis is not great, but his vitals are fine for the time being. If he does pull through he may need full time care. . ."

— Bert Koller, 29 November 2014