Sunday, December 27, 2015
PABLO NERUDA'S HOMES ~
Saturday, December 26, 2015
FRN TAKE NOTE! ~
A train on the Xianggui railway in southern China.
Wang Wei’s photographs show off China’s natural beauty as well as its trains.
Photograph: Wang Wei
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/25/china-train-hunter-wang-wei-chronicle-expanding-railways
article: The Guardian: UK
FRN: "fucking railroad nut"
article: The Guardian: UK
FRN: "fucking railroad nut"
Friday, December 25, 2015
MERRY MERRY ~
Oberägeri, Switzerland
People dressed as Santa Claus pose on their stand-up paddles
as they cross Lake Ägerisee
Photograph: Arnd Wiegmann/Reuters
Thursday, December 24, 2015
Wednesday, December 23, 2015
NO STAGING ~
Workers polish a snow sculpture ahead of the annual
Harbin (China) International Ice and Snow Festival
Photograph: Sheng Li/Reuters
CHARLES BUKOWSKI ~
wearing the collar
I live with a lady and four cats
and some days we all get
along.
some days I have trouble with
one of the
cats.
other days I have trouble with
two of the
cats.
other days,
three.
some days I have trouble with
all four of the
cats
and the
lady:
ten eyes looking at me
as if I were a dog.
_________________
C H A R L E S B U K O W S K I
"A large number of the poems published in the posthumous collections,
especially beginning with What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through
the Fire (1999), differ — sometimes radically so — from the manuscript version
of the very same poems. In an attempt to rescue Bukowski's genuine voice and style,
the poems in this volume are faithful reproductions of the original manuscripts. If a
given manuscript could not be found, then the appropriate magazine version was
used; literary magazine editors made very few changes — if any — even printing
Bukowski's unintended typographical mistakes. The sources below indicate which
version is being used for each poem as well as its date of publication."
"Poems flagged as uncollected have previously appeared in small press magazine
only, but given their obscure nature and limited print runs — 200 or 300 copies, if that —
it is almost as if they were never actually published. Likewise, while some of the poems printed
in this collection have appeared in previous Black Sparrow Press and Ecco volumes of
poetry, the versions made available here have never been published before. This book,
then, is a collection of new poetry and prose by Charles Bukowski."
For a poet like Charles Bukowski, who certainly didn't begin his writing career with the
likes of Ecco Press, or even Black Sparrow Press, I have highlighted above an astonishing
statement by the editor Debritto, diminishing the very world where Charles Bukowski made
his name and reputation: the small press magazine and those obscure journals with limited
print runs. His early bread & butter. His charter. His family. If I'm not mistaken, some part of
even the Ecco publishing organization also cut their teeth on publishing a small press journal
and drew authors from its vast underground. Best not to be smug re Bukowski's background.
He could be listening.
[ BA ]
Tuesday, December 22, 2015
Monday, December 21, 2015
Sunday, December 20, 2015
MAURICE SCULLY ~
Oak, pine, juniper and ash grew here in these
valleys 60,000 years ago where in summer the
ground was covered with wild flowers among the
grasses. . .
the grains in the cave. . . minute dots
drifting in on what we now call "June" breezes. . .
a little pale blue butterfly . . .
or one of the bodies of . . . the hides and skins of . . .
of
. . . tiny hollows in a bone decoration . . . or . . .
by water in a deep recess here (& here)
a little ripple I think
Look
____________________
M A U R I C E S C U L L Y
from H U M M I N G
Shearsman Books 2009
Saturday, December 19, 2015
Friday, December 18, 2015
P I E R P A O L O P A S O L I N I
New York City 1966
photo Duilio Pallottelli
from R I C H E S
Behold those times re-created by
the brutal power of sunlit images,
the light of life's tragedy.
The walls of the trial, the field
of the firing squad; and the distant
ghost of Rome's suburbs in a ring,
gleaming white in naked light.
Gunshots: our death, our survival.
Survivors, the boys enter a ring
of distant buildings in the harsh
color of morning. While I, in the pit
of today, have a kind of snake in my guts,
twisting about, and a thousand tears
dripping from every point in my body
from my eyes to my fingertips,
from the roots of my hair to my chest.
My weeping knows no bounds: it wells up
before I can understand it, almost
preceding the sorrow. I don't know why
I'm wracked by all these tears as I glimpse
that group of boys walking away
in the harsh light of an unknown Rome,
a Rome just resurfacing from death,
surviving with all the magnificent joy
of gleaming white in the light,
full of its immediate destiny
as postwar epic, of brief years
worth a whole lifetime.
I see them walking away, and it's quite
clear that, as adolescents, they're on the road
of hope, in the midst of ruins
engulfed in a whiteness that is life,
almost sexual life, sacred in its misery.
And as they walk away in the light
I shudder, on the verge of tears: Why?
Because there is no light
in their future. Because there's only
weary backsliding, only darkness.
They're grown up now. They've lived
their dreadful postwar years
of corruption engulfed in light
and now they surround me, poor men
for whom every agony proved useless,
servants of time, at a moment
when we awake to the painful surprise
of learning that all that light
for which we lived was only a dream,
unjustified, unobjective, wellspring
now of lonely tears of shame.
___________________________________________
P I E R P A O L O P A S O L I N I
The Selected Poetry of Pier Paolo Pasolini
edited and translated by Stephen Sartarelli
with an astonishingly forthright and revealing
Foreword by the film director
James Ivory
( University of Chicago 2014 )
Thursday, December 17, 2015
MAW SHEIN WIN ~
A bed with softer animals
It is raining.
It is Tuesday night.
There are 36 steps up to Alan's apartment on the East Sde.
A bed with softer animals.
A Doberman Pinscher walks into a 7-11 and buys a carton of milk.
I notice these things.
Rain waters the buildings and they grow and grow.
Makes thieves work harder.
Softens mountains.
Ruins sandwiches.
Some paintings make me cry.
I Like Crying.
Gunsmoke was a good show to cry to
Also, the Waltons' Christmas Special.
Alan is reading about cannibals in New Guinea.
The cannibals average at five feet tall.
They roast their dead for 30 days then bury them in the jungle.
Alan told me it rains more in the jungle, but I knew that already.
What I don't know is how lightning feels on the body.
Or what makes a glowworm glow.
Or why the neighbor keeps knocking his head against the wall.
_______________
M A Y S H I E N W I N
from Cross-Strokes
Poetry between Los Angeles and San Francisco
edited by Neeli Cherkovski and Bill Mohr
Otis Books
The Graduate Writing program
Otis College of Art and Design
2015
photo ~ female glow worm
Wednesday, December 16, 2015
Tuesday, December 15, 2015
EMERALD POEM ~
L E N O R E K A N D E L
Emerald Poem
there reaches a point without words
safe a point deep within the emerald
seabright washes over eyes and tongue
frozen the stonebirds fly soft among my fingers
their tiny beaks tapping snowflakes from my thumb
the color of emeralds
the solid becomes the liquid and I the greenbreather
I am at home among the nebulae
in the heart of the emerald
safe a point without words
one is one and I the green breather
I the gill singer
oh the liquid green flowers that the small birds carry!
they fade to lavender
on my tongue
they fade to lavender on my eyes
oh the stars that devour me in the heart of the emerald
safe in the flowers of the emerald
safe at the point without words
________________________
L E N O R E K A N D E L
from Cross-Strokes
Poetry between Los Angeles and San Francisco
edited by Neeli Cherkovski and Bill Mohr
Otis Books
Seismicity Editions
The Graduate Writing program
Otis College of Art and Design
2015
Monday, December 14, 2015
KEEP ON ROCKIN' ~
A homeowner looks at the view from the property owned by the Edge of U2.
Environmental groups and residents of canyons and hillsides had
lambasted the rock guitarist's original development proposal, saying it
would cause irreparable harm to habitat and views.
(photo ~ Anne Cusack / Los
Angeles Times)
ARAM SAROYAN~
Aram and Gailyn Saroyan, St. Mark's Church, 1969
Photo by Jayne Nodland
Friendly Persuasion
The body and the mind
Have a talk together
And the mind convinces the body
To go out with it on a date.
Soon afterwards
The mind calls the body up on the telephone
And says,
"Why don't you drop by?"
"When?" the body asks.
"How 'bout this afternoon."
In no time at all the mind and the body
Are doing steady.
Then they get married.
For a while they are very poor
And sometimes they have to go and stay at the body's folks' place
And then they have to stay at the mind's folks' place.
Neither one is a very good place to stay
They decide
And almost immediately they have a child.
________________________
A R A M S A R O Y A N
from Cross-Strokes
Poetry between Los Angeles and San Francisco
edited by Neeli Cherkovski and Bill Mohr
Otis Books
Seismicity Editions
The Graduate Writing program
Otis College of Art and Design
2015
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