OUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK ~

M O R E

go get 'em

WORKING CLASS HERO ~

C.P. CAVAFY ~

House With Garden (1917)





I wanted to have a home in the country

with a very large garden — not so much

for the flowers, the trees, and the greenery

(certainly there will be that, too; it's so lovely)

but for me to have animals. Ah to have animals!

Seven cats at least — two completely black,

and, for contrast, two as white as snow.

A parrot, quite substantial, so I can listen to him

saying things with emphasis and conviction.

As for dogs, I do believe that three will be enough.

I should like two horses, too (ponies are nice).

And absolutely three or four of those remarkable,

those genial animals, donkeys,

to sit around lazily, to rejoice in their well-being.



______________________


C.P Cavafy
COLLECTED POEMS
translated from the Greek by Daniel Mendelsohn
Knopf, 2009

BEAUTY ~

Beauty

Traveling by car

On the interstate

North, along with many

Others, the beauty

Of the day is a farmer

And his team of work

Horses — across the median

And the other highway —

Gallantly plowing a field,

And neither seeing or

Caring if we see how good

Some of us still live

Grain

Two farm boys hike

Into a high pasture

Lit by rain clouds,

Scaled of singing birds,

And call out the names or

Favorite expressions of the

Dozen cows grazing who stomp

At a run uphill where

Boys and cows gather

In a circle of affection —

Tails twitching, hands slapping

Hide — all heads spilled to

A scattered pail of grain

Can You Imagine

Can you imagine this

Being your life at six

Years old walking out

The woodshed door as

A blue heron lifts up

From our old truck

And you run inside

Even though you

May be late for

School to tell us

About the bird this

Big (arms can’t spread

Yet big enough) as

We look into your

Expression loving that

Bird we missed

A Gift for the Living

We heard them —

But it was a moment

Before we saw them

Clear the trees —

I counted 66 or more

And he was still

Counting, his hand

To the sun, as

                                           Geese flew over

                                                              

                                                              

________________________

B O B     A R N O L D

Once In Vermont

Gnomon

NONTHINKING MEETS NONFEELING ~

FAIRFIELD PORTER (LETTERS) ~

F A I R F I E L D     P O R  T E R

L  E  T  T  E  R  S

a book that fell between the cracks

slender, tidy, and a compass

to the artist

DESTRUCTION AND SORROW BENEATH THE HEAVENS ~

 "It is important to know that, in the Confucian tradition,
morality was an aesthetic criterion: for Confucius, a work was
beautiful that taught one the good. In contrast, contemporary
art is floundering in various muddied formal objectives, and as
far as I can judge, in Europe the situation is the same. As if it
were possible to elevate, among the most fundamental factors 
of these works, one of them — the aesthetic — and simply 
renounce the others, the most essential: the criterion of morality.
In my opinion, this is partially the reason for the general trend
by which the readership of high literature has radically dropped.
And this is also the reason for poetry having lost its leading role.

   So that, well, now I would simply finish what I have to say by
repeating, and emphasizing, that the work of the artist is to find
his own relation to his own culture. The artist of today should
be the same as they were in the days of old: in order to bring forth
their works, they must withdraw from the world, they must keep
a great distance from it and they must create a completely individual
way of life. An artist cannot be identical with a member of society.
His role, his significance is extraordinary — if he loses it, nothing
will come in its place."


XIAO HAI speaks with LASZLO KRASZNAHORAKI

Destruction and Sorrow Beneath the Heavens
Seagull Books

GERARD BELLAART ~

G E R A R D     B E L L A A R T

When I look at Gerard Bellaart's artworks, I see three separate but integrated aspects of his mastery: the large paintings that bring a dream world out of hiding; the drawings and etchings that range in emotion from intense frenzy to delicate contemplation both in subject matter and technique; and the inked printings of various kinds -- such as the "fragmentations" and "stenciled texts," as he calls them -- which strike the eye with brilliant motifs based on ideas taken from literary sources. 

With an artist as prolific as Bellaart, it is easy to lose sight of what he is best at or what he himself may consider the summit of his achievement. From the sheer number and size of his most recent paintings, it would be reasonable to say they are his most important works not only because he has devoted so much energy to them but because they are the most ambitious. The paintings of the last dozen years or so deepen and broaden themes that have persisted from the beginning. They recapitulate and summarize on a more elaborate scale his vision of a cryptic world already recognizable in many of the smaller works going as far back as his etchings of the 1970s. 

Bellaart's drawings look spontaneous, and I have no doubt that many of them are, but you can be sure they are supported by years of preparation. His explorations evolve from one to another with a freewheeling ease that could only come from the exacting skill of a draughtsman who has been deeply trained. And while the subterranean creatures of his paintings may differ in magnitude and degree of abstraction from the figures in his drawings, their similarity is obvious.

If I had to single out what I find most appealing in Bellaart’s work, a difficult if not impossible task, it is his portraiture. The portraits capture their subjects with a psychic acuity that brings their interior moods to the surface. It seems to me each one is a reflection of Bellaart himself, not in their likenesses (which are in fact tellingly accurate), but in their modes of expression. For example, the portrait of Willem de Kooning, whom Bellaart reveres, is drawn with a line as sensitive as a poem by Keats. The dual portraits of William S. Burroughs exhibit polar sides of Burroughs’s personality -- one demonic, the other pensive -- with opposing techniques suggesting brutal cruelty and thoughtful reflection.

The portrait of Roger Blin, a favorite of mine, personifies a freely flowing exuberance that is at the same time deadly serious, a description also applicable to Bellaart. But the most mysterious portrait is the one that he drew of himself in 2013. He calls it “a furtive self portrait,” indicating something oblique about it. What it suggests to me in its surprising but subtle likeness is a secret identity that dates back centuries, perhaps to the 15th-century Dutch printer-artist Jacob Bellaert from whom he is descended.

Bellaart has never wanted to be famous. One could even say the protean nature of his output has helped keep it that way by muddling his artistic identity. But, in fact, he has always appreciated being unknown, taking as his credo what the 19th-century Belgian printmaker and artist Felicien Rops said: “The idea of being known repels me. I value my obscurity; I have turned it into a trait.” And so it remains.

Jan Herman New York 4 XII 2015

JOHN LE CARRE ~

J O H N     L E     C A R R E

I didn't want this brambly book to end — brambly because we end up everywhere this spy master in his memoir and essays and asides-of-a- sort takes us. Deep into Russia, of course, and Palestine, Israel, forever Germany. Spies just love Germany to this day, it must be the weather, the aura, the type of cities, the names of the cities. As Walter Benjamin would remind us, "More quickly than Moscow itself, one gets to know Berlin through Moscow." And le Carre, master of espionage looks like a spy, even though he claims he has been out of that business since he was about 30, showing forth with his third novel and most known The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963) . When he comes to America it is Hollywood. He writes that of all the films made from his good books, his favorite films were the ones that were almost made from his books. It takes a long time to finish this book of just 300 pages because you are going to be sent into every corner. The author's father was a con man, or a saint, depending. His mother never hugged him, the con man (saint) did. He writes well of spies, betrayal, the degree of research into his books which takes him into dangerous places where I bet Philip Roth has never been. There is almost a medical precision to every piece even though the author looks comfortable and casual in his suit without a tie, sitting in a simple chair, on concrete against a concrete wall, arms and legs crossed, a pinkie ring on one hand while awaiting interrogation. It could have been a more normal and long-winded and gallant book. That it comes brambly may mean the author isn't giving away all the secrets.

[ BA ]

Viking ~ 2016

YEHUDA AMICHAI ~

My Parents' Lodging Place



1

I passed the cemetery where my parents are buried —
in a poem Ibn Ezra called it "my parents' lodging place."
I didn't go in, just passed by on the road outside the wall.
I wave to my parents whenever I pass, my soul shaped like a hand.
My soul changes shape: sometimes my eyes, my eyelids,
sometimes even my eyelashes — all these are my soul.
Peace to my parents, peace to their dust,
peace to their lodging place in Jerusalem.


2

In their great love my parents saved me from disappointment,
from pain and sorrow. Now I am left with their savings
plus the pain I would like to spare my children.
How all those savings have piled up on me!
My parents always told me, "I'll show you,"
sometimes threatening, sometimes in a voice of sweet love:
I'll show you. Just you wait, I'll show you.
"Someday you'll learn," sternly. "Someday you'll learn,"
in a soothing, reassuring voice.
"Do whatever you want," yelling and screaming,
and "Do what you want, you're a free person,"
like the good angels singing in chorus.
You don't know what you want,
you don't know what you want.


3

My mother was a prophet and didn't know it.
Not like Miriam the prophets dancing with cymbals and
      tambourines,
not like Deborah who sat under the palm tree and judged
       the people,
not like Hulda who foretold the future,
but my own private prophet, silent and stubborn.
I am obliged to fulfill everything she said
and I'm running out of lifetime.
My mother was a prophet when she taught me
the do's and don'ts of everyday, paper verses
for one-time use: You'll be sorry,
you'll get exhausted, that will do you good, you'll feel
like a new person, you'll really love it, you
won't be able, you won't like that, you'll never manage
to close it, I knew you wouldn't remember, wouldn't
forget give take rest, yes you can you can.
And when my mother died, all her little predictions came
      together
in one big prophecy that will last
until the vision of the end of days.


4

My father was God and didn't know it. He gave me
the Ten Commandments not in thunder and not in anger,
not in fire and not in a cloud, but gently
and with love. He added caresses and tender words,
"would you" and "please." And chanted "remember" and "keep"
with the same tune, and pleaded and wept quietly
between one commandment and the next: Thou shalt not
take the name of thy Lord in vain, shalt not take, not in vain,
please don't bear false witness against your neighbor.
And he hugged me tight and whispered in my ear,
Thou shalt not steal, shalt not commit adultery, shalt not kill.
And he lay the palms of his wide-open hands on my head
with the Yom Kippur blessing: Honor, love, that thy days
may be long upon this earth. And the voice of my father —
white as his hair. Then he turned his face to me one last time,
as on the day he died in my arms, and said, I would like to add
two more commandments:
the Eleventh Commandment, "Thou shalt not change,"
and the Twelfth Commandment, "Thou shalt change. You will
    change."
Thus spoke my father, and he turned and walked away
and disappeared into his strange distances.


_______________

The Poetry of Yehudi Amichai
edited by Robert Alter
Farrar 2015

STANDING ROCK SIOUX ~

The proposed 1,130-mile, $3.8 billion Dakota Access pipeline would pass through North Dakota, South Dakota and Iowa on its way to Illinois.

Read more ~

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/12/north-dakota-standing-rock-protests-civil-rights


See more ~

http://www.democracynow.org/2016/9/10/breaking_arrest_warrant_issued_for_amy

BOB POEMS ~

Trail

I stepped off

The road onto

A trail into

Woods of

Fresh snow —

Not too deep —

Followed for

A quarter mile,

Ducking branches,

Watching them

Persist in a

Straight line

Until they went

One way, and I

The other — the

Small hand prints

Of raccoon

Hermit

I’m the one who stacked

This stove wood ten cords

Deep under the roof of a

Broad woodshed, and sawed

Old pine boards across

To make a dutch door for

Its entry, and now I enjoy

How daylight squints into this

Burrow where round logs are

Pulled down to split each day

If you like you can find me

Talking to myself busting apart

Ash sticks with a favorite

Hatchet, its head weight just

Right, filling a kitchen basket —

Nothing like a simple tool that works

And when slipping the clear ribs

Of a whole snakeskin out of

Soft curled bark of yellow birch —

I remember that tree cut down

But this visitor I missed

Woods Work

At lunch break unwrap

And sit in place melted

Ice never tasted better

Snow falls in big flakes

Doesn’t amount to much

On hot chain saw engine

Back Track

Bobcat tracks in

Wet snow behind the

House this late March —

Came back two months later

With no warning

Both wings on

One of our ducks

Spread open floating

Along the pond edge

— a good time to see

Bright under feathers

Of blue & gray/green —

But the head ripped off

___________________

B O B     A R N O L D

Once In Vermont
Gnomon