ELFRIEDE JELINEK ~

FOUND OBJECT

THE PRESENT MOMENT ~

long ago Gary Snyder

The Earth's Wild Places

Your eyes, your mouth and hands,

the public highways.

Hands, like truck stops,

semis rumbling in the corners.

Eyes like the bank clerk's window

foreign exchange.

I love all the parts of your body

friends hug your suburbs

farmlands are given a nod

but I know the path

to your wilderness.

It's not that I like it best,

but we're almost always

alone there,

and it's scary but also calm.

_________________________

Gary Snyder

"This poem was lost for some years and then turned up again.

I don't remember any publishing history for it other than as a

fugitive broadside maybe in the seventies." GS

The Present Moment

Gary Snyder

Counterpoint 2015

psst — who in the world set "Gary Snyder" on the cover off-center?!

http://www.npr.org/2015/04/18/400573636/at-84-poet-gary-snyder-lives-in-this-present-moment

BLAISE CENDRARS ~

http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4388/the-art-of-fiction-no-38-blaise-cendrars

SPRING JUKE ~

music compiled by bob arnold
april 2015

FIRST SNOW AS I SPLIT WOOD ~

FIRST SNOW AS I SPLIT WOOD


 


Thin snow falling into
 
Valley fog, quiets everything,
 
No bird call, nothing flying —
 
The splitting wedge and hammer
 
Echo over the pasture
 
While the flakes open bigger
 
For no reason other than snow
 
And I straighten my sweaty back
 
And watch this world, lend a tongue
 
And taste it melt


_____________


© Bob Arnold 

from Where Rivers Meet
Mad River Press 1990 

RAVENS IN THE STORM ~

As a young father of three Carl Oglesby once worked for a defence contractor — the 60s being the 60s — he was soon president of the SDS — Students for a Democratic Society. Almost a half century before our present time opening doors with Cuba, Oglesby was instrumental at building a bridge to the revolutionary state. He could be seen as untrustworthy by his more radical colleagues, called in to be a witness at the Trial for the Chicago 8, to this day he is remembered as giving some of the finest speeches on-foot to the tribe, the movement, the grass roots. This memoir reflects that talent; it's upbeat, and his memory for the time is elegant and sure. He passed away in 2011 somewhat forgotten. The lone rider, Oglesby did for his era as a writer what Clancy Sigal did for his.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/10/books/review/Dixler-t.html

WHILE YOU SLEPT ~

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/02/opinion/our-land-up-for-grabs.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

LAURA MARLING : SHORT MOVIE ~

MARCEL DUCHAMP ~

AKA Marcel Duchamp

edited Anne Collins Goodyear

James McManus

(Smithsonian 2014)

http://www.understandingduchamp.com/

TOMAS TRANSTROMER ~

Tomas Tranströmer

1931-2015

http://tomastranstromer.net/

After a Death

Once there was a shock

that left behind a long, shimmering comet tail.

It keeps us inside. It makes the TV pictures snowy.

It settles in cold drops on the telephone wires.

One can still go slowly on skis in the winter sun

through brush where a few leaves hang on.

They resemble pages torn from old telephone directories.

Names swallowed by the cold.

It is still beautiful to hear the heart beat

but often the shadow seems more real than the body.

The samurai looks insignificant

beside his armor of black dragon scales.

TOMAS TRANSTROMER

translated by Robert Bly

WANG AN-SHIH ~

(1021–1086)

Autumn Night



I doze, a guest among topsy-turvy books,
then sit amid insect song. Isolate silence,

remnant lamp casting halos of darkness,
heavy dew settling across cold branches:

it's joy absolute to gaze out all idleness,
or even more, to sit deep ch'an stillness,

and it's beyond insight. I clamp my nose,
and chant in a long-ago sage's lost voice.









Wandering Out With A Full Moon To
Eightfold-Integrity River



Thoughts turned far away from you,
confusion rife, I can't sleep. Finally

I rise, gaze up into bright stars, then
saddle a horse and wander the road

east, thinking rivers and mountains
might ease my worries. I know you

are no dinner. Come: we'll ladle out
clouds together here at their source.











River



When a spirit-spring broke open, it began
swelling and coiling on ahead and through

mountains crowded up, blocking the way.
It keeps flowing right on time to the sea,

harboring bright pearls in mud and sand,
frolicking dragons in cloud-and-rain dark.

Why ask where all its depths came from?
River gods see no further than themselves.









Sent To Assistant Magistrate Guide-Bell



You hurry around your life, and I just idle through mine,
so how could we ever wander up Bell Mountain together?

Outside city gates, I keep a child's routine. But turning to
look back, I see a lifetime of world-dust in a single dream.









Suddenly



Suddenly spring's ending. I close my brush-bramble gate,
green leaves already flooding the city, thick with shadow.

Old-age years are like this. I've lost the urge to see places,
but is there anywhere this spring wind can't go wandering?









Farewell To Candor-Achieve



Traveling north we delight in family,
and drifting south savor friends. How

could we forget each other? We gaze
anywhere into all our kindred depths.









Thoughts Sent On My Way Home From
River-Serene, After Stopping To Gaze At
Samadhi-Forest Monastery



My lame donkey hates the stony road
up there, and I'm done with big climbs.

It seems forever since I saw you, my old
monk friend. Our youth suddenly gone,

I keep following morning clouds away,
then race evening birds back into this

valley of pines all shadowed dark. Here,
I know you in the distances between us.









Gazing North

  

Hair whiter still, I ache to see those long-ago northlands,
but keep to this refuge: goosefoot staff, windblown trees.

Pity the new moon: all that bright beauty, and for whom?
It's dusk. Countless mountains face each other in sorrow.



________________________________

Translated by David Hinton
The Late Poems of Wang An-Shih
(New Directions 2015)

I selected and designed a small foldout booklet
once upon a time of David Hinton's Wang An-Shih
and am delighted to find this full collection
~ not a bum poem in the lot

LITTLE BIG QUOTE ~

"Thanks to the grandiosity and naïveté of W., Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz — another Jeb foreign policy adviser — U.S. Middle East policy is so muddled that, after occupying and blowing up Iraq, we are working with Shiite Iran to push back Sunni insurgents in Iraq and working with Sunnis and their Saudi Arabian allies in Yemen against a Shiite militia that has Iranian support."

M A U R E E N   D O W D     NEW YORK TIMES   M A R C H 29, 2015

 

 

TEAM WORK ~

TEAM WORK




Each time the delivery trucks

Hit and knock partly over the

 

Stone cairn I built at the top of

Our dirt drive, each time, I re-

 

Build the cairn, stone by stone,

And each time the impatient

 

Drivers hit it and each time I

Rebuild it, until I'm getting good



____________


© Bob Arnold

DON CARPENTER ~

http://www.doncarpenterpage.com/fiction.htm

http://www.doncarpenterpage.com/brautigan.htm

http://www.doncarpenterpage.com/poetry.htm

The Works

_________________

    Hard Rain Falling (1966, novel)

    Blade of Light (1967, novel)

    The Murder of the Frogs and Other Stories (1969, short stories)

    Getting Off (1971, novel)

    Payday (1972, screenplay)

    The True Life Story of Jody McKeegan (1975, novel)

    Charles Bukowski's Post Office (1977, screenplay)

    A Couple of Comedians (1979, novel)

    Snyder, Whalen and Welch, Together (1981, magazine article)

    Turnaround (1981, novel)

    The Class of '49 (1985, novel and three stories)

    The Dispossessed (1986, novel)

    From A Distant Place (1988, novel)

    Fridays at Enrico's (1993–1994, published 2014)

WYOMING ~

Wyoming 1954
photograph by Elliott Erwitt

PAULA FOX ~

Paula Fox Paris Review Interview

http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/1/the-art-of-fiction-no-181-paula-fox

STEFAN HYNER ~

WERNER HERZOG ~

Werner Herzog

A Guide for the Perplexed

(Faber 2014)

Conversations with Paul Cronin

 On the back cover of the book, Herzog offers a list of advice for filmmakers that doubles as general purpose life advice.

1. Always take the initiative.
2. There is nothing wrong with spending a night in jail if it means getting the shot you need.
3. Send out all your dogs and one might return with prey.
4. Never wallow in your troubles; despair must be kept private and brief.
5. Learn to live with your mistakes.
6. Expand your knowledge and understanding of music and literature, old and modern.
7. That roll of unexposed celluloid you have in your hand might be the last in existence, so do something impressive with it.
8. There is never an excuse not to finish a film.
9. Carry bolt cutters everywhere.
10. Thwart institutional cowardice.
11. Ask for forgiveness, not permission.
12. Take your fate into your own hands.
13. Learn to read the inner essence of a landscape.
14. Ignite the fire within and explore unknown territory.
15. Walk straight ahead, never detour.
16. Maneuver and mislead, but always deliver.
17. Don't be fearful of rejection.
18. Develop your own voice.
19. Day one is the point of no return.
20. A badge of honor is to fail a film theory class.
21. Chance is the lifeblood of cinema.
22. Guerrilla tactics are best.
23. Take revenge if need be.
24. Get used to the bear behind you.

Robin Magowan

 
Robin Magowan

The Garden of Amazement

 Scattered Gems After Sâeb

 Longhouse 2015

112 pages, perfect bound, 6 x 8-1/2 inches

ISBN 978-1-929048-28-1

$15
U.S. addresses ~ order here through PayPal
Shipping & handling: $2

International orders shipping $15

SAMUEL CHARTERS ~

that the only permanence

                     is loss

its pain — despite what I said —

to be always within me.

                         Beyond the season

             the season's loss.

             S  A  M  U  E  L    C  H  A  R  T  E  R  S

                  (1929 ~ 2015)

                  Bluesmaker, folkmaster, producer, music historian

           author, translator, educator, poet

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/19/arts/music/samuel-charters-foundational-scholar-of-the-blues-dies-at-85.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=1