THE REAL THING ~

Remembering John Herald

The World of John Herald

SMALL TOWN TALK ~

DaCapo Press, 2016

Along with Joe Boyd's White Bicycles

Hoskyns Small Town Talk

is one of the few enthralling books

on the subject of 60s popular music
from a small town like no other

and its cast of characters.

Hoskyns hits his stride from one

legendary pivot to the other: Albert Grossman,

Bob Dylan, The Band, Janis Joplin, various music

studios, producers, hometown local folkies

at the time Maria Muldaur, Jim Rooney, John Herald,

the drifters in and out like Jesse Winchester, Karen Dalton and Paul Butterfield

plus the diehard comments when needed by Ed Sanders.

You want a book that comes in and takes off its coat,

kicks off its boots, rolls up its sleeves and knows how to visit.

Here's the book.

BARNEY HOSKYNS SMALL TOWN TALK

JORGE CARRERA ANDRADE ~

JORGE  CARRERA  ANDRADE

Imprisoned beneath the leaf

an anemone watches

the world's sadness pass


Y A H A








The cicada.

Nothing in its song reveals

that tomorrow it must die.


B A S H O








Closed house:

Around the paper lantern

the bats dance.


R A N S E T S U








Beneath the vast snowfall

many hidden seeds

wait for spring.


I N E M S O








In this everything ends:

The skeleton of a fan

when the autumn wind blows.


O T S U Y U








The dead leaf

landing caresses

the stone tomb.


R A N S E T S U








Wild goose, wild goose

how old were you

when you first cut loose?


I S S A








Spring dies

and filled with tears

are the eyes of fish.


B A S H O


_________________________________

translated from the Spanish by Andrade
then from the Spanish by Joshua Beckman
and Alejandro de Acosta

WAVE BOOKS   Micrograms   2011 

IN A STATION (1968) ~

KATHERINE DUNN~

remembering

K A T H E R I N E     D U N N

(the young writer, then 24 years of age)

1945 ~ 2016

Katherine Dunn NY Times obituary

ON GROWING OLD IN SAN FRANCISCO ~

On Growing Old in San Francisco

Two girls barefoot walking in the rain

 
Both girls lovely, one of them is sane

 
Hurting me softly

 
Hurting me though

 
Two girls barefoot walking in the snow



Walking in the white snow



Walking in the black



Two girls barefoot never coming back




_____________________
J A C K     G I L B E R T

Views of Jeopardy
Yale Series of Younger Poets, volume 58
with a foreword by Dudley Fitts
Yale  University Press, 1962 


 

Long before Jack Gilbert was anywhere near old — President Jack Kennedy was still alive, Martin Luther King was alive, Malcolm X was here, The Beatles and Stones had yet to land in the USA,

so far a monkey had been shot into space, but Jack Kerouac had begun his decline, and Jack Gilbert wrote this poem. I heard him read the poem when it was both raining and snowing outdoors, early April, and now Jack Gilbert was very old, taking the stage, and this was one of the first poems he brought forth, maybe it was the first poem of the evening; by the way he presented the poem, with the smallest commanding voice, I recall nothing afterwards. It was as if an old man, very old man, had never forgotten these girls, that weather, those times, that sighting, and the very place, and we were nowhere near San Francisco. And yet with his declining powers, we were. The whole room. He looked up and paused after reading this short poem as if to see if people were really paying attention and did they hear what he had just read? It was from his very first book of poems. The best poets remember every poem they wrote.

JACK GILBERT'S PARIS REVIEW INTERVIEW

GUY CLARK ~

G U Y     C L A R K

November 6, 1941 – May 17, 2016

GUY CLARK ON FACEBOOK

SMALL TOWN BUILDER ~

THE HAND OF THE SMALL TOWN BUILDER

  a marvelous book, sometimes found remaindered so act accordingly,

on a disappearing architecture and lifestyle which has no

reason at all to disappear

the text is conscientious and savvy

the photographs are mouth-watering for any builder

WOODCUTTER, Part 2 ~

Work Gloves

On the garden gate

Left here with me —

Shape of her hands

 

I Have Been Told

Down on the river

There is a small place

Where there is no sound

Nothing, and I know it well

And I have been told

And since found

That when climbing back

Loaded with water

At the top of the rise

If you half turn your head

The river will tilt into your ear

 

Horse & Farmhand

Here is the slowness

Of afternoon and sun

A farmhand bending to lift

A sleeve of ice

From a trough

In the pasture

The horse that stands still

The snow we’ve been waiting for

 

Winter Day

I swore if you laid

Your cheek, wind

Blown red as any

Soft maple leaf

Onto the pond,

And looked down through

The half-foot of 

Ice, the rest was

Water flowing clear

Way back up to you —

The scales of depth

Catching your breath

___________________________

Bob Arnold
WHERE RIVERS MEET

TOM JONES MEETS JOHN LEE HOOKER ~

Can a 70 year old one-time Welsh pop star

Sing the Blues —

have a listen.

The two twins in the band

drive the train

(2010 )

THE TARBOX RAMBLERS ~

A Boston four-piece band
(or three)

that plays right out of the

railroad cinders

(Rounder, 2000)

REBECCA WOLFF ~

R E B E C C A     W O L F F

Man Tits




Look at that pair,



on the one over there.

He's young, skinny, low

muscle tone, poor, white, under-

educated . . . gazing

down

on a

path



in the little patch

of yard in front of his

unfavorably situated

rental where he stands, hands

on hips, mutable, conceivable

speculation on the next weekend

chore.



But his tits are the good

kind: fat, conical, pale against

the brown of his wife-beater tan,

nipples slightly shiny,

areolate. Bouncy, native tits



like the ones you came to see.






Admit No Impediment




I'm going to get up from the table

and go to the bathroom



When I get back,

if your napkin has moved

from the left side of your plate

to the right, I'll

know you want to.



There will be no need to speak.

Or, wait a minute,

maybe it should be if your napkin

hasn't moved.



I want to make this

as easy for you

as I can.






Parkeresque




I'd like a

lidless



Vicodin.

Oblivion.



Countless

sensation of him



leaving the room.

Come back soon.



It occurred to me

fait accompli.



Clinamen.

Phantom limb.



Black cat sleeping

(you used to be

next to me)

next to me



dreams our lost

telepathy.


____________________



Rebecca Wolff
One Morning —.
Wave Books, 2015

NUMBERS (15.60.75) ~

A seven-piece, three-sax band from Kent Ohio

led by lead singer-guitarist Robert Kidney

This was often the band's closing number

"Up the road I'm going," Jimmy Bell wails

("what road?")

PERE UBU ~

( Fire 2014 )


 

DARLING COMPANION ~

Darling Companion

by Bob Arnold

New and available now from Longhouse ~

136 pages
 Perfect bound softcover

____________________________________

$15


Shipping $3.95 ~ U.S. orders with Paypal

Buy now through easy-to-use Paypal

International orders ~ complete $30 with Paypal payment

all orders may be made by Paypal, credit card or check ~
 

mail order here:

LONGHOUSE
 PO Box 2454
 West Brattleboro, Vermont 05303

WOODCUTTER, Part 1 ~

-->

Night Table

Here is part of you

While you sleep —

The small shine

Of silver earrings

Dogs In Snow

I bring them out water

They drink around the ice

Chains rap on the bucket

Shivering I wait

Looking up into the stars

What I see in their eyes

Plowing back to the house

After shaking their coats goodnight

Strength in my hands

The Pleasures of Love

 

The last of my noon hour

Black tin lunch pail

Sitting on a sap soaked maple stump

Woodchips nettled on my woolen socks

Finding the fruit cup she made for me

Clear cold glass in my oiled hand

Neat slices of strawberry and pear

 

December

She’s supposed to be land clearing

Heaping brush to burn in first snow

But the pale yellow ghost of tall

Summer grasses she sweeps down

Is instead caught in her hand

And placed that way in a kitchen vase

Showing a warmth to last us through winter

_________________ 

Bob Arnold
WHERE RIVERS MEET
(Mad River Press) 


photo ~ a young farm worker smiles for the camera


 












 

SHERRY ~

It’s been seven years today since my older sister Sherry died. In Florida. Unexpectedly. Alone. I think of her as a friend from my hometown on Crandall Street works to put together a Facebook page of all the kids that once lived on the street and my sister was one of those kids, one of the prettiest ones, as all the girls were pretty in that long ago. The street was our world. I could walk out my parents house and see Mount Greylock loom large right above the house tops of the neighbors across the street. The street was our world. The hospital where many of us were born was midway of the street and we played all our football games there in its field. Tackle, not touch. Most driveways were tar and almost every driveway had a basketball hoop, at least where the kids lived. There were great old ladies on the street. I had a pair of them either side of our house and we were friendly with all of them, especially two right next door to our basketball court (the driveway) where I’d wander over after supper and sit on their front porch with the rocking chairs and rock with my old lady friends. I can’t remember their names and remember everything about their faces, the walk into the inner sanctum of the beautiful home inside, the polished oak woodwork, the darkness, the cuckoo clock, the back door kitchen light where I found again sunlight and I moved through the darkness of the rooms to get to that sunlit door, into the backyard, the terraced gardens, a small built garage for one car. Everything in its place. My sister Sherry dressed me up in girl’s clothing since she didn’t have a little sister. My two younger brothers weren’t born yet. I was trans-gender before there was trans-gender. She played music by The Shirelles that still booms in my head off her on the floor 45-only turntable. Huge and sassy and blossoming women voices. Out of the girl’s clothes and into my clothes, older, she brought me Dylan. I already had the Beatles and the Stones but on The Byrds first album there was this insect looking spectacle called Bob Dylan. He looked different, darker, wiser, more dangerous than the troubadour on the first Dylan album I bought “Another Side.” My sister had a boyfriend who played Byrds songs. He had a guitar like Roger (Jim) McGuinn’s, long slack hair, my parents one night kicked him out of the house. He stayed lurking, slept on the driveway that night. My great sister. Right out of a Shirelles song. Where we buried her one late morning you can really see Mount Greylock. The tallest point in Massachusetts was in the clouds when we arrived early for the burial. How many times did I scramble up the Thunderbolt Trail with my pals off Crandall Street! Insisted on taking every member of my family up that mountain with me; the guitar player boyfriend of my sister (now married to him) I grabbed one winter day and we scaled up through snow. Scared him half to death. Laughed our heads off for years afterwards remembering that day, all those days. By the time Sherry’s ashes were set into the ground, the mountain, obedient to its friends, came out of the clouds. And the sun did shine.

 [ BA ]

My Sweetest Friend at Longhouse