IF I WERE A CARPENTER ~

THE KAPLINSKI SYSTEM ~

Knutersi Christiani osas Karl Kalkun, Bastubacka Märteni osas Jaan Kaplinski
Foto Viktor Mendunen
Kersti Gailani kogu

T H E      K A P L I N S K I      S Y S T E M

J A A N     K A P L I N S K I

FOR, SUSAN ~

STEPHEN CRANE ~

_________

There is a grey thing that lives in the tree-tops

None know the horror of its sight

Save those who meet death in the wilderness

But one is enabled to see

To see the branches move at its passing

To hear at times the wail of black laughter

And to come often upon mystic places

Places where the thing has just been.



 ________________________

S  T  E  P  H  E  N     C R A N E
Complete poems
THE LIBRARY OF AMERICA 2011



 





 

NINE POUND HAMMER ~

THE FILMS OF PHILIP TREVELYAN ~

Basil Bunting (1982)

T H E     F I L M S   O F

P H I L I P     T R E V E L Y A N

 

REVERSE PRAYER ~

J I M     H A R R I S O N

Reverse Prayer



I pray for Mandelstam hiding covered
with snow in a ditch. The Stalinists want to kill
him and finally succeed. I want him to escape
to Nebraska, please God. I pray for Lorca
that the assassin's guns won't work and he'll
escape like a heron flying west to the Mediterranean
then across the ocean to Michigan where he might
dislike the snow but at least he's alive.
He loved Cuba and Brazil for their music which
we don't have much of here. Please God, save him.
I even pray for Keats that he won't die
so young but get another thirty years or so
to write poems in Rome. He likes
sitting with my girlfriend on the Spanish
Steps. Can I trust him? Probably not
but I want more of his poems so I'll overlook
his behavior. And of course Caravaggio
the king of painters must live longer,
God. Why create a great painter
then let him die early?



_____________

JIM HARRISON
Dead Man's Float
Copper Canyon Press
2016 


 




 

DAYS ALONE ~

Visitors

The river for weeks is low

Visitors arrive

Call it a creek

We know better

Say nothing

Next month in a downpour

Bridges wash out

Trees go down

Days of mud

No one visits

Walking From Town Between
Midnight and 4 A.M.

I must have carried out

Every peeper in this valley

Home with me, 13 miles

Trees shiver in light rain

The moon following the

Fences following­

A hillside of fog lies down

Generously in an apple orchard

Here is where a few sheep

Suddenly break into a run

A horse pounds the night

Meeting you at barbed wire

What is the sound between us

It is water that has brought me back

Winter

Just before supper

I watched a storm draw in

Taking light

The trees toss

No matter

I have finished carrying

Elm from the edge of the woods

Bucked, split then stacked

I am done

Well used

Come snow

 

______________ 

Bob Arnold

Where Rivers Meet

Mad River Press

 

MAEVE BRENNAN ~

Counterpoint Press, 2016

MAEVE BRENNAN REVIVAL?

CLAUDIA SEREA ~

C L A U D I A     S E R E A

You made me write bad poetry for years



You must stick your head in the oven,

and fake your own death

in every poem,

that critic said.



Honey, you have to open a vein

with your pen

every time.



But I couldn't help it.



I was young

and had a breeze for heart.



I was a bright green leaf

in your arms.



Light passed through my flesh

and refracted

translucent emotions.



I wrote about birds taking flight.



Gosh, white horses,

and poplars with eyes.



For years, I wrote

about being blind.



_______________


Claudia Serea
Nothing Important Happened Today
Broadstone 2016

REMOTE ISLANDS ~

Here is a little (literally) dream book for you —

and not only are the islands remote 

(try Thule, one of the southernmost 

of the South Sandwich Islands)

you will probably never wash up onto one

the subject is mesmerizing and impossible

and the format of the book, a soft cloth,

will go with you anywhere in your dreams

all of this Earth

STREET POISON ~

 S T R E E T    P O I S O N

the biography of

I C E B E R G     S L I M

by

Justin Gifford

Doubleday, 2015

http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-fires-that-forged-iceberg-slim

LAST KIND WORDS ~

THE TRACE ~

H A V E     A     L O O K

DUDLEY LAUFMAN ~

DUDLEY LAUFMAN

New and available now from Longhouse 2016 ~

 

Bull & More Bull

136 pages, perfectbound softcover

$18

Shipping $3.95 ~ U.S. orders with Paypal
Buy now through easy-to-use Paypal, US Orders, $21.95

 

International orders ~ complete $38 with Paypal payment

L O N G H O U S E

 PO Box 2454
 West Brattleboro
Vermont 05303

NUTSHELL ~

Public’s Disgust With the Democratic Party Propels Sanders

Thomas Frank is the author of "Listen, Liberal, or What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?" and "What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America."

Updated March 14, 2016, 3:22 AM

Bernie Sanders is a fine politician, but that is not why he has emerged from obscurity to win so many Democratic primaries. The real story here is the breakdown of the ideology pursued for decades by the Democratic Party’s dominant faction. 

The party gave up its historic mission to serve working people years ago and chose instead to represent the New Economy’s winners.

The Great Recession started in 2007, and for millions of average Americans no recovery has come. For most of the years since then, there has been a Democrat in the White House, and those Americans have a right to wonder why the eloquent hero they voted for has done so little to improve their situation. They see that banks, health insurance companies and Silicon Valley are doing extremely well; why, then, don’t their wages grow?

The answer, and the key to Sanders’s success, is staring us in the face: Because the Democratic Party gave up years ago on its historic mission of serving working people and chose instead to make itself into the party of professionals, of the New Economy’s winners, of a group they love to flatter with phrases like “symbolic analysts,” “wired workers” and the “creative class.” 

This shifting allegiance is the fundamental reason that Democrats began to identify with Wall Street back in the 1990s (and then with Silicon Valley) but what makes this story so aggravating is the way Democrats keep choosing professionals over workers again and again. One class of Americans they reward with subsidies and forgiveness; the rest of us get discipline. The 1994 crime bill and the end of welfare were all brought to you, remember, by the same Democratic administration that rolled back the rules for banks and telecoms. The North American Free Trade Agreement and its many successors have brought, well, freedom to those who employ but anxiety and diminished lives to those who work. The present Democratic administration has hounded individuals who lied on mortgage applications, but it seems to find top bankers incapable of wrongdoing. And in these years of galloping industrial concentration and power grabs by Silicon Valley, antitrust enforcement has dropped off the agenda. 

Democrats habitually brush off economic despair with references to “globalization” and “technology,” as though their complicated free-trade deals were the unknowable doings of the Invisible Hand Itself. The problem is not changing the economic system, they say, it is adjusting ourselves to the changes sweeping the world. When they look at inequality, they see not economic failure but individual failure, usually having to do with education, a subject of pious reverence for the professional class. You’re falling because you didn’t study hard enough or you didn’t go to a good school or you majored in the wrong subject. 

What Bernie Sanders represents is the public’s growing disgust with this kind of liberalism and, hopefully, its final repudiation.

ALSO BERNIE

 

 

 the ny times

ME BOSS ~

THE TV AD MADE FOR THESE TIMES, TRUMP TIMES

THE NATURAL PHENOMENON ACTOR IS PATRICK WARBURTON


 



 

PALM IT ~

Someone kind sent me this book the other day through the mail.

Wasn't that nice!

Don't you love books that fit in the palm of your hand? I do.

This one is published in 100 numbers by Scram Press 

(with that name they sound like they're having fun)

in 2014. Only 100 copies. Catch it while you can.

They're based in Northampton-Tuxedo Park.

The whole of it, I guess, was first published in the Massachusetts Review.  

Illustrations are by Charlie Schmidt from his 1935 book Radio Patrol.

More fun.

James Haug hits the mark on each one with a one line poem, caption,

what have you. It works.

I've been banned from the living room.

AH, REPUBLICANS! ~

George Bush and Hillary Clinton recently shared a hug

at the Nancy Reagan funeral

The photo was posted on Twitter by David Chalian, CNN’s political director. Photograph: Twitter

TERRA ~

Terra

There is evidence of spring everywhere

A pair of geese, into a headwind / point north

The shed door shuts easier now

Rain water comes to the meadows

Planks are thrown down

Passing

It is Spring

Already you relax in a cotton skirt

Passing through mountains is a strong feeling

Fields plowed, new wood split, a hawk floating

Puffs of softwood in the gray hills

A river runs with snow melting

A small bridge neatly built to get by

There is pleasure in such places

An old woman and her huge straw hat

Raking the far corner of a hayfield

 ____________________________________

Bob Arnold

Where Rivers Meet

Mad River Press