H IS FOR HAWK ~

Listen to Helen Macdonald, author of
H is for Hawk
Grove 2014

 

http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2015/05/20/4238550.htm

HIGH NOON (PARIS) ~

ROBIN COSTE LEWIS ~

 

Beauty's Nest


       JIM CROW WELCOMES YOU HOME
AFTER THE WAR, JUST AFTER MIDNIGHT
              GRAND CANYON: 1951



Beauty's nest
renders the body
mute. An elegance
so inconceivable,
it's violent. Extreme. It hurts
the heart to see
something so vast and deep
can also be made of dirt.

And if it can be
of the earth, the body
ponders, might
such a landscape
exist also within me?

The four of you stand
silent, uniformed on its rim,
while the imagination tries
to conceive all the things
it is still too dark
to see.

You jump back
into your wide tan Ford
and begin to drive
again — again — past
all the motels, and their signs,
which, were it not just
after midnight, you know —
and could see — say
WHITES ONLY



Red All Over


The politics of frogs
The musth of butterflies
Elegies of cotton
The whiteness of flies
Interruptions by snails
A lie's guarantee
The hope of succotash
A chorus of hominy
Permission of the persimmon
Observations by the spine
The pincushion's reassurance
The propaganda of a line
Cackling from the Bible
Orations by the dog
The mirror's steady rifle
The fig tree's scarlet log
Ands and their derision
Lending library in the eyes
Patois' agnosticism
The tongue's chain mail of whys?
Lady calling from the ocean
Invisible Man on the moon
Lindy-Hopping dead upon
The ceiling in the living room
Girl asleep in the avocado
The minstrelsy of the floor
Bickering Birds-of-Paradise
Picketing the fickle front door



Dog Talk 


We-be   bo-broke   e-bev-ry-by

sy-byl-la-ba-ble-ble



O-bour    mo-bouths    bo-broke    the-bem

a-band    o-bo-pe-bened    the-bem

fo-bor    ai-bair    o-bor    wa-ba-ter-ber

o-bor    see-beed    o-bor    foo-bood.



A-banse-se-bers,    que-bues-tio-bens,

na-bames,    se-be-cre-bets.    We-be

be-bent    E-ben-gli-bish,

em-bem-bra-baced    i-bit

the-ben    e-be-ra-based    i-bit

a-bat    the-be    sa-bame    ti-bime.



 ___________________

R O B I N    C O S T E    L E W I S 
Voyage of the Sable Venus
Knopf 2015

 

STEVIE WONDER ~

GOOD SHEPHERD ~

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Airplane_discography

TOMAS TRANSTROMER ~

THE FORGOTTEN CAPTAIN




We have many shadows. I was on my way home

one September night when Y

climbed out of his grave after forty years

and kept me company.



At first he was completely blank, just a name

but his thoughts swam

faster than time ran

and caught up to us.



I put his eyes into my eyes

and saw the war's sea.

The last boat he commanded

rose up from under us.



Ahead and behind the Atlantic convoy crept,

those who would survive

and those who'd been given The Mark

(invisible to all).



While the sleepless hours relieved each other

but never him —

the life vest snug under his oilskin coat.

He never came home.



It was internal crying that bled him to death

in a Cardiff hospital.

He finally got to lie down

and turn into the horizon.



Farewell eleven-knot convoys! Farewell 1940!

Here's where world history ends.

Bombers hung in the air.

Heather bloomed in the moors.



A photo from early in the century shows a beach.

Six well-dressed boys standing there.

They have sailboats in their arms.

What serious expressions!



The boats that became life and death for some of them.

And to write about the dead

is also a game, made heavy

by what is yet to come.



___________________________

T O M A S    T R A N S T R O M E R
translated by Patty Crane
Bright Scythe
Sarabande Books 2015

WE GOTTA GET OUT OF THIS PLACE ~

U N I V E R S I T Y  O F  M A S S A C H U S E T T S  P R E S S

 2015

http://news.wisc.edu/12188

the beat goes on. . . 

MIROSLAV HOLUB ~

The Last Night Bus

The last night bus echoes away

into the depth

of the night's

spinal cord.

Stars shiver

unless they explode.

There are no other civilizations.

Only the gentle

galactic fear

based on methane.

Teaching About Arthropods

The male mite Adactylidium

hatches in his mother's body,

gobbles her up from the inside,

while mating

with all his seven

little sisters.

So, when he's born,

it's as if he were dead:

he's been through it all

and he's freelance,

in the bull's-eye,

in the focus

of extracurricular existence:

an absolute poet,

non-segmented,

non-antennated,

eightlegged.

Distant Howling

In Alsace,

on July 6, 1885,

a rabid dog knocked Joseph Meister down

and bit him fourteen times.

Meister was the first patient

saved by Pasteur's

vaccine, in thirteen

gradually increased doses

of weakened virus.

Pasteur died of ictus

ten years later.

Fifty years later

the watchman Meister

committed suicide

when the Germans

occupied Pasteur's institute

including the poor dogs.

Only the virus

never got involved.

When the Bees Grew Silent

An old man

suddenly died

alone in his garden

under an elderberry bush.

He lay there until dark

when the bees

grew silent.

It was a beautiful death, wasn't it,

Doctor, says

the woman in black

who comes to the garden

as always

every Sunday,

and in her bag brings

lunch for two.

The Dead

After the third operation, his heart

pierced like an old carnival target,

he woke in his bed and said:

Now I'll be fine,

like a sunflower. And have you ever

seen horses make love?

He died that night.

And another one plodded on for eight

milk-and-water-years

like a long-haired water plant

in a sour creek,

as if he stuck his pale face out

on a skewer from behind

the graveyard wall.

Finally the face disappeared.

In both cases the angel of death

stamped his hobnailed boot

on their medulla oblongata.

I know they died the same death.

But I don't believe they're dead

in the same way.

_____________________

MIROSLAV HOLUB

Interferon, or On Theater

translated from the Czech by

David Young and Dana Habova

Field, 1982

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/miroslav-holub

EVE'S HOLLYWOOD ~

New York Review of Books 2015

http://www.nyrb.com/products/eve-s-hollywood?variant=2197698945

http://thesecondpass.com/?p=493

DO WE? WE DO ~

MILTOS SACHTOURIS ~

M I L T O S    S A C H T O U R I S

Wind Blew




Wind blew

flowers from another world



like a church



with black stigmata of evil

here and there

burning the skin red



in sleep

her hair

smelled tragically

sweet






Hour-Hand


From a high mountain I saw the sea

in its arms I saw

birds living and dying

and I shone high like a star

with tears and with nails

and around me fish and ladders

ladders they could climb up to push out

my heart

ladders I could climb down

to shred the heart of the sea







For Spring



The sun is green

the trees are burning

awaiting the swallows

our iron swallows' nests

no longer fool us with their flowers

they cost us our arms and legs

now our arms and legs are hanging

from the trees






The Poet's Head


I cut off my head

I put it on a plate

and took it to my doctor



— There's nothing wrong, he said,

it's just overheated

throw it in the river and we'll see



I threw it in the river with the frogs

and it raised a dreadful racket

it started shrieking and howling

all kinds of strange songs



I picked it up and put it back on my neck



and roamed the streets in a rage



with a poet's green hexagonometric head 



__________________


Miltos Sachtouris
Poems
(1945-1971)
translated from the Greek by
Karen Emmerich
Archipelago books, 2006

RICHARD HELL ~

S O F T   S K U L L   P R E S S   2015

http://www.richardhell.com

KAREN DALTON ~

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2007/mar/23/folk

NEW! FRANCO BELTRAMETTI BOOK ~

edited by Stefan Hyner


http://www.spdbooks.org/Search/Default.aspx?PublisherName=Blackberry%20Books

"Franco Beltrametti's smooth-barked Muse leads him across the grids of latitude and longitude to the source of good medicine poems. A suavity masks these elemental songs - or rather, gives these elder faces a modern "human" mask. Civilized, in the best sense."

Gary Snyder

Franco in action ~
https://vimeo.com/48647354

THOMAS BERNHARD ~

T H O M A S    B E R N H A R D

MY FATHER

My father suffered from the aridity of the earth,

likewise from the moldered face of summer,

he climbed the mountain and rested above the tarns.

At that time the ships used to sail westwards,

never shall I forget how my father's hand

reached out for the human soul —

He climbed the mountain to see the countryside that they

trampled to bits in seven weeks.

"I tell you," he said, "Love is indestructible —."

Then the tanks rolled over the wheat field and buried

hope for the coming year.

They all suffered from the aridity of the earth, some

fell back into the night, saying: we

cannot find any verses at all in this monstrous poem.

My father believed this earth belonged to him, since he

had bought a hundred acres and a hut with

trees; in which he slept,

but found no dream.

For hundreds of millions of years he gazed into the animals' eyes

as they flickered on Christmas Eve.

He said: "We don't need candles!"

My father brought a branch from the olive tree and carried snow

to the lips of his sisters.

In Siberia he embarked upon a voyage, yet

needed an eternity, because they were all suffering

from the aridity of the earth,

and a voice within him said: "I shall dip my light

in the human snow."

___________________________

 

T H O M A S    B E R N H A R D

translated from the German by

Peter Waugh

 
















 Three Rooms Press (2015)

 http://www.thomasbernhard.org/