Sunday, January 25, 2015

ONCE IN VERMONT ~








 
Traditional dancing at the Malikha lodge
  photo ~ Brigitte Lacombe for The New York Times




It isn't Vermont, but present day Myanmar, although I can remember a time in back hills Vermont
where this lush description of pure simple nothingness/everything, was also my own habitat:



"Here, local people tend to retire and rise with the sun. Each new day is announced not by cellphones, clock radios or the beeping of other digital devices, but by the first insomniac rooster’s prelight reveille, a clarion call that quickly triggers a wrap-around sonic cacophony, as every other backsliding rooster in the neighborhood joins in to herald the dawn. Then from across the river, where rice paddies step down to the shore, come the sounds of crying babies, laughing children and the chopping of wood. Only then does the sky begin to brighten and smoke begin to curl up from cooking fires. And when the sun finally does burst forth to limn the frieze of jagged, snow-capped peaks behind the forested foothills, it is, indeed, like being present at creation."



Read more of this fascinating article by Orville Schell, long in the tooth with Asia, old & new, as well as the whole of the Pacific Rim.









Friday, January 23, 2015

NEW! CID CORMAN OF VOLUME 4 & 5 ~
















                                                                                                       OF


                                                                             So many days and

                                                                             so many nights ex-

                                                                             act infinity



                                                                            The petals of the

                                                                            flowers of an in-

                                                                            dissoluble light.


                                                                                                                 CC








ANNOUNCING
The final volumes to Corman's opus in one book ~ 

of

volumes 4 & 5

by

C I D   C O R M A N


_________________




1500 poems

850 pages

edited by Bob Arnold

available in a limited edition from, limited quantity available

L O N G H O U S E

____________________


ORDER HERE ~

Shipping is priority mail only for US orders
insured with tracking

$100
plus $7 US mail priority

Paypal, credit card, or check






~

International orders, $100
 plus $40 air priority rate

Paypal or credit card









Longhouse
 Publishers & Booksellers
PO Box 2454
West Brattleboro, Vermont
05303 





OTHER NEW TITLES FROM LONGHOUSE



_________________________







CARSON ARNOLD
If I Blinked Through
These Windows
Collected Music Writings     
a big soaking book of youth      ~ $20









 









 J.D. WHITNEY
 Sweeping The Broom Shorter ~
 Selected Poems     ~ $15


two different covers ~ take your pick!


















BOB ARNOLD & JASON CLARK
 Sapline     
maple sugaring in Vermont     ~ $12










 

 

 MALCOLM RITCHIE
Small Lines On The Great Earth

poems from Scotland     ~ $15












BOB ARNOLD
My Sweetest Friend  
poems from brother to sister     ~ $15










DUDLEY LAUFMAN
 The Islandian 
Poems & Fables
journey to another land     ~ $12




    

 


BOB ARNOLD   
Go West
c'mon! travel westward by train   ~ $15














BOB ARNOLD  
Start With The Tree
photographs by Susan Arnold
a lifetime of building & marriage      ~ $20





FORTHCOMING BOOK TITLES BY~

JANINE POMMY VEGA

LORINE NIEDECKER

ROBIN MAGOWAN






Thursday, January 22, 2015

SNOWY OWL ~







S N O W Y    O W L

Photograph: Christopher Millette/AP



Rare — we caught two snowy owls
in flight above a family neighborhood
flying spruce tree to spruce tree
of western massachusetts in late 2014






Tuesday, January 20, 2015

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ERNESTO CARDENAL ~







Ernesto Cardenal

born January 20, 1925
Granada, Nicaragua 




from  Zero Hour


Translated By Donald D. Walsh



 

Tropical nights in Central America,
with moonlit lagoons and volcanoes
and lights from presidential palaces,
barracks and sad curfew warnings.
"Often while smoking a cigarette
I've decided that a man should die,"
says Ubico smoking a cigarette . . .
In his pink-wedding-cake palace
Ubico has a head cold. Outside, the people
were dispersed with phosphorous bombs.
San Salvador laden with night and espionage,
with whispers in homes and boardinghouses
and screams in police stations.
Carías' palace stoned by the people.
A window of his office has been smashed,
and the police have fired upon the people.
And Managua the target of machine guns
from the chocolate-cookie palace
and steel helmets patrolling the streets.

Watchman! What hour is it of the night?
Watchman! What hour is it of the night?


The campesinos of Honduras used to carry their money in their hats
when the campesinos sowed their seed
and the Hondurans were masters of their land.
When there was money
and there were no foreign loans
or taxes for J.P. Morgan & Co.,
and the fruit company wasn't competing with the little dirt farmer.
But the United Fruit Company arrived
with its subsidiaries the Tela Railroad Company
and the Trujillo Railroad Company
allied with the Cuyamel Fruit Company
and Vaccaro Brothers & Company
later Standard Fruit & Steamship Company
of the Standard Fruit & Steamship Corporation:
                        the United Fruit Company
with its revolutions for the acquisition of concessions
and exemptions of millions in import duties
and export duties, revisions of old concessions
and grants for new exploitations,
violations of contracts, violations
of the Constitution . . .
And all the conditions are dictated by the Company
with liabilities in case of confiscation
(liabilities of the nation, not of the Company)
and the conditions composed by the latter (the Company)
for the return of the plantations to the nation
(given free by the nation to the Company)
at the end of 99 years . . .  
"and all the other plantations belonging
to any other persons or companies or enterprises
which may be dependents of the contractors and in which
this latter has or may have in the future
any interest of any kind will be as a consequence
included in the previous terms and conditions . . ."
(Because the Company also corrupted prose.)
The condition was that the Company build the Railroad,
but the Company wasn't building it,
because in Honduras mules were cheaper than the Railroad,
and "a Gongressman was chipper than a mule,"
                     as Zemurray used to say,
even though he continued to enjoy tax exemptions
and a grant of 175,000 acres of the Company,
with the obligation to pay the nation for each mile
that he didn't build, but he didn't pay anything to the nation
even though he didn't build a single mile (Carías is the dictator
who didn't build the greatest number of miles of railroad)
and after all, that shitty railroad was
of no use to the nation
because it was a railroad between two plantations
and not between the cities of Trujillo and Tegucigalpa.

They corrupt the prose and they corrupt the Congress.
The banana is left to rot on the plantations,
or to rot in the cars along the railroad tracks
or it's cut overripe so it can be rejected
when it reaches the wharf or be thrown into the sea;
the bunches of bananas declared bruised, or too skinny,
or withered, or green, or overripe, or diseased:
so there'll be no cheap bananas,
                         or so as to buy bananas cheap.
Until there's hunger along the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua.

And the farmers are put in jail for not selling at 30 cents
and their bananas are slashed with bayonets
and the Mexican Trader Steamship sinks with their barges on them
and the strikers are cowed with bullets.
(And the Nicaraguan congressmen are invited to a garden party.)
But the black worker has seven children.
And what can you do? You've got to eat,
And you've got to accept what they offer to pay.
                        24 cents a bunch.
While the Tropical Radio Subsidiary was cabling Boston:
"We assume that Boston will give its approval to
the payment made to the Nicaraguan congressmen of the majority  
         party
because of the incalculable benefits that it represents for  
       the Company."
And from Boston to Galveston by telegraph
and from Galveston by cable and telegraph to Mexico
and from Mexico by cable to San Juan del Sur
and from San Juan del Sur by telegraph to Puerto Limón
and from Puerto Limón by canoe way into the mountains
arrives the order of the United Fruit Company:
"United is buying no more bananas."
And workers are laid off in Puerto Limón.
And the little workshops close.
Nobody can pay his debts.
And the bananas rotting in the railroad cars.
                   So there'll be no cheap bananas
                   And so that there'll be bananas cheap,
                              19 cents a bunch.
The workers get IOUs instead of wages.
Instead of payment, debts,
And the plantations are abandoned, for they're useless now,
and given to colonies of unemployed.
And the United Fruit Company in Costa Rica
with its subsidiaries the Costa Rica Banana Company
and the Northern Railway Company and
the International Radio Telegraph Company
and the Costa Rica Supply Company
                     are fighting in court against an orphan.
The cost of derailment is $25 in damages
(but it would have cost more to repair the track).

And congressmen, cheaper than mules, Zemurray used to say.
Sam Zemurray, the Turkish banana peddler
in Mobile, Alabama, who one day took a trip to New Orleans
and on the wharves saw United throwing bananas into the sea
and he offered to buy all the fruit to make vinegar,
he bought it, and he sold it right there in New Orleans
and United had to give him land in Honduras
to get him to break his contract in New Orleans,
and that's how Sam Zemurray appointed presidents in Honduras.
He provoked border disputes between Guatemala and Honduras
(which meant between the United Fruit Company and his company)
proclaiming that Honduras (his company) must not lose
"one inch of land not only in the disputed strip
but also in any other zone of Honduras
(of his company) not in dispute . . ."
(while United was defeating the rights of Honduras
in its lawsuit with Nicaragua Lumber Company)
until the suit ended because he merged with United
and afterward he sold all his shares to United
and with the proceed of the sale he bought shares in United
and with the shares he captured the presidency of Boston
(together with its employees the various presidents of Honduras)
and he was now the owner of both Honduras and Guatemala
and that was the end of the lawsuit over the exhausted lands
that were now of no use either to Guatemala or Honduras.







 _________________




Ernesto Cardenal


“Zero Hour” (excerpt)
 Zero Hour and Other Documentary Poems
 New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1980
 translated by Donald D. Walsh










Monday, January 19, 2015

Saturday, January 17, 2015

Friday, January 16, 2015

LOS ANGELES POETRY SCENE 1950-1990 ~












Sophie Rachmuhl
A Higher Form of Politics
Otis Books / Seismicity Editions
Otis College of Art and Design
2015



Thursday, January 15, 2015

SZE TSUNG LEONG ~







Sze Tsung Leong
Horizons
Hatje Cantz 2014

http://www.szetsungleong.com/





Monday, January 12, 2015

THOMAS A. CLARK ~






Tom and Laurie Clark at Woodwick House
photo : © Alistair Peebles







you will have to go

all around it

to see it



have to stay

with it

to know it









a breeze

of small birds

moving through

birch leaves









a stone from shade

carried for a mile

cool in the hand









a breath is enough

to fan the ripples

of water that run

deliciously in

around dwarf juniper









slopes of sunlight

slopes of snow

sit together

above the scree

innocent

of incident









what you feel

you can contain

what you see

you will become









one song of water

picking up

from another



the slopes

constantly

spilling water


as you climb

it pours

around you


rushing, dashing

leaping to find

its level









whatever is lifted

by the wind is dropped

again into a calm

slightly ahead of itself









if you stretch out

in the long grasses

your weight is distributed

over the headland

to rest as lightly

on the crushed grasses

as sky on sea









once again

for the first time

morning








 


T H O M A S   A.   C L A R K




__________________________

selected from
The Hundred Thousand Places
Carcanet  2009



Thomas A. Clark lives in the small fishing village of Pittenweem
on the east coast of Scotland.



http://northings.com/2009/09/29/yellow-and-blue-thomas-a-clark-laurie-clark-porteous-brae-gallery-stromness-orkney/





Sunday, January 11, 2015

SOUND POETRY ~












T W O    B O O K S
Craig Dworkin

Marjorie Perloff







Saturday, January 10, 2015

START WITH THE TREE ~








Building a marriage, building a family,
 building a small barn out in the woodlands together 
as a family, as a marriage, 
and seeing the roof go on.





 Bob Arnold
Start With The Tree

photographs by Susan Arnold 

with an introduction by Gerald Hausman

Longhouse 2015

  160 pages, perfect bound, 5.5 x 6.25 inches
Over 150 photographs 

$20

order here through Paypal, plus $3.95 (US shipping only)







 
international shipping,  $20 plus $15