Hatje Cantz, 2013
Wednesday, March 15, 2017
Tuesday, March 14, 2017
Monday, March 13, 2017
BEAUTIFUL DAYS ~
Amongst the Rocks
Just who are those women
bent over on the rocky
shoreline searching and
searching and seemingly
searching for more, a pail
at their feet, plastic and
colored, not a work pail,
and these women seem
from another place in
time, not in beach wear,
skirts and hair wild with
the wind
It was only days and
days later, when we
were off the road
back home in the
woods that we spoke
with our son who asked
“where did you go”
and we told him of our
travels from mountains
and streams and rivers
and finally to the sea
and about these women
one morning bent at the
shoreline, amongst the
rocks, that he told us,
years earlier, right there
amongst the rocks, he
had thrown his wedding
Men's Room
even
the
bum
( bless him )
looks
in the
mirror
Beautiful Days
Beautiful days
when we are home
at work in the woods
far from the maddening crowd
today we lugged
out on shoulder (me)
arms (you) ash and
maple logs from a
glade I cleared
early in September —
it topped off a cordwood
stack we started last week —
wouldn't you know
by day's end
right on that woodpile
is where the sun falls too
—————————————
Bob Arnold
Bob Arnold
BEAUTIFUL DAYS
Longhouse, 2013
Sunday, March 12, 2017
Saturday, March 11, 2017
Friday, March 10, 2017
TERESE SVOBODA ~
L O L A R I D G E
Anything That Burns You
A portrait of
Lola Ridge, Radical Poet
Terese Svoboda
Schaffner Press, 2016
Thursday, March 9, 2017
DAVID HADJU ~
Farrar 2016
The latest from the songful mind and memory of David Hadju, who remains
in the long list of music critics, one of the best at keeping his head in the clouds
and his feet firmly on the ground.
Each of his books — whether on the jazz world; Bob Dylan, Richard Farina and the
orbit of American folk music, are rich in portrait and analysis
steeped in enriched storytelling. In this new book on pop music at all
its staggered levels, he shows a knack for historical research
as well as rekindling his childhood.
[ BA ]
Wednesday, March 8, 2017
INUA ELLAMS ~
The Forced
One day when you are pissing on the roadside,
your cracked bare feet on grass streaked with feces
and porewater plastic bags, you will hear his name
and turn to watch his convoy, numerous as the aunts,
the uncles and ancestors you have never known, inch
down the crowded Mushin street singing his praises
as if a capitalist black Jesus, dishing cold hand cash
to those pressed either side of his jeep, hands out —
stretched, pleading with a hunger you know too well.
One month later, when another born-troway smoking
stolen Indian hemp talks softly of the crude oil rags
and patchwork dishcloths you both wore as nappies,
shivers from the same foul breeze blowing the truth
of your fractured life, you will call his name, Oluomo,
speak its solid weight and wonder if it is worth a try.
One year after your quick slim fingers have caught
the attention of his boys who dance drunk on paraga,
the oil drum fire flickering in their eyes, you will hear
they too were born and thrown away, they had snakes
for mothers too, but were lifted from gutters and now
are this citywide tribe of hard men spidering through
the night Oluomo alone controls: homes raided, rivals
knifed, politicians bribed, the rich ransomed and each
area-boy willing to die for each. You marvel at such
family, ask if they need help, anything you will do.
One decade from now, when police who are vicious
as they are duplicitous have beaten you senseless,
have dumped your swollen self in a concrete cell,
when you deny them the satisfaction of betrayal
/ no be by force o, no be by force / you will cry
your throat dry as cracked feet, sob uncontrollably
as blood bubbling your torn nostril bursts, you will
call for your brothers, but for now you are free.
——————————
INUA ELLAMS
The Wire-Headed Heathen
Akashic Books 2015
Inua Ellams was born in Nigeria in 1984.
He now lives in London and works as a poet,
playwright, performer and graphic artist.
Tuesday, March 7, 2017
Monday, March 6, 2017
Sunday, March 5, 2017
Saturday, March 4, 2017
PIERRE REVERDY ~
From hand to hand
I no longer think of anything but the night
The long thawing winter of sovereign thoughts
Now that the circuit is closing
A dead star drags a fire without sparks though the black sky
Cold hands unshackled but always at a cost
A timid distorted glow around the unsheltering hearth
At the roundabout of failures
Destitution paler than an egg
Against the battered fence in the foul breath of hate
I walk the parched trail of happiness
The distance open to its hour
In the furious rattling of links shaken free
Desertionless days held back with a chain
No room any more not here not there
Fixed at a standstill
The hive of light
———————————
Pierre Reverdy
translated from the French by Dan Bellm
Black Square Editions
Friday, March 3, 2017
Thursday, March 2, 2017
POETS WHO SLEEP ~
[ imagined ancient love poems ]
MY LIPS are shy,
like a candle that will not flicker.
I WOULD twist my arms like coral
if that made them delicate enough to hold you.
COLOR IS sleeping in some birds
when the sun is too early
to make use of it.
THE SEASON is yet unlit
by the glint of the sewing needle.
The thread is stored away, the light
is an unwoven shirt.
I EMBRACED YOU by mistake
when I was only trying to caress you.
Now you love me.
WE CAME across a hunter disguised as a bird.
The towns pay these lords for protection. This is revealed
in a parable the women tell. They speak of a rose
that grew in the desert from a drop of blood.
WHO ARE you going to meet tonight
in the tall grass
where even snakes cannot find each other?
Your bare feet
will be the safest part of you.
CLAY pots, shaped from the inside
like a sun
when the sky was spinning.
_____________________
DANIEL NADLER
Lacunae
Farrar 2016
DANIEL NADLER
Wednesday, March 1, 2017
TRIVIAL FIGHTS ~
______________________________________________________________________
And Trump said the time for “trivial
fights is behind us.” He just didn’t say
which trivial fights he meant.
Protecting the rights of gay, lesbian
and transgender people?
Safeguarding voting rights?
Investigating whether members of the
Trump team had colluded with the
Russians to influence the 2016
presidential election? Or maybe
finally getting him to release his tax
returns, as every other modern
president has done?
_________________________
A N D R E W R O S E N T H A L
March 1, 2017 (New York Times, excerpt)
Donald Trump, Master of Low Expectations
GUY BIRCHARD~
Hecatomb Sixteen
Monarchs in hatbands:
Defeat deep in one's captured eyes.
Insouciance in the other's sweet.
Sitting Bull sees back forever, 1881,
downriver, liberty bad arrested,
last rifle surrendered,
earthly beauty and symbol of a
Monarch butterfly pinched from the air,
tucked for emblem, for camera, in hatband.
Old Walt, celebrated signifier at large, 'bout
same date, photographer's fool-de-rol, props
one of cardboard on forefinger, points a-
way. We don't do defeat in this culture.
We may do a cardboard
Monarch for the camera . . .
Defeat defeats us. In Sitting Bull's memory
and mind he rides all day in one direction
at liberty in open country. Without
no pain.
Hecatomb nine
Shooting Crows Again:
Time was, we lived odd
seasons on the prairie. Then
we witnessed first basque flower break
sod, and the cranes' high gyre.
Now I'm a townie, aint seen
a crocus in years, no more than hear
the cranes' weird croak way up.
Wind burns the snow and the snow
decomposes, the land so dry no melt
runs off. Shallow sloughs for waterfowl.
The crows are a good sight, back. I could
stand to be a crow, to make their play
in flight, to gang up in raucous confab, but for
the diet . . .
Cousin magpie succumbs to the new
virus in the land. Rancher
says he don't miss 'em. "Bastards
peck fresh cattle brands." I
miss them. I turn fifty-five
this spring, storm stayed. No
excuses, lots less of the map to follow
than retrace, fiddle-footed as ever,
a man of no rank come to a place without merit.
______________
Guy Birchard
H E C A T O M B
Pressed Wafer | Brooklyn
2017
Tuesday, February 28, 2017
BERTA CACERES ~
Berta Cáceres speaks to people near the Gualcarque river in 2015 where residents were fighting a dam project. Photograph: Tim Russo/AP
Berta Cáceres court papers show murder suspects' links to US-trained elite troops
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