HIGHER GROUND ~

VERA PAVLOVA ~

The Hand Organ Man





Mommy bathed her girl,

Daddy dried her off,

Grandpa hurried with

a nightie for her,

Grandma smoothed the sheets,

brother fluffed the pad,

Mommy laid her down,

Grandpa tucked her in.





[ Pain ]




Pain, you are the sole proof

that my body exists.

You have made your point;

now cease. But I

will never believe

the body is all

there is to me.








[ Crossing ]



Crossing a meadow of daisies,

pushing the pram along

a jolty path (a tiller

behind the plow),

singing peasant-style,

I pluck a daisy: Look!

From the pram a pair

of wide-open eyes

stare back at me.









[ ever ]



ever so gently

the cradle rocks

a bumblebee naps

inside a rosebud

in a puddle the rain

fell asleep like a drunk

where is she loafing

that daughter of ours









[ Making ]



Making love as much as we wish,

skinny-dippy whenever we feel . . .

How is life, naked kids?

Life teems in every cell!

All alone, as in an Eden,

no laws, as in dreams . . .

I spread my skirt on the grass:

life of mine, come to me.









[ I am ]



I am

a nail

being driven in

while I try

to keep

straight

hoping

the carpenter

will get tired

or the hammer

will break

or the board

will crack and I

will roll

into a cozy nook

and will find you there

my love

my love









[ Remember ]



Remember me the way I am

this very instant: brusque and absent,

with a word beating against my cheek

like a butterfly caught in a curtain.









[ at twenty ]



at twenty

to fuck



at thirty

to love



what will I do at forty?



will look lively

will work

will be prod:

see, straight As!



will hope

to be pardoned

at fifty









[ I got ]




tanned all over

on a nameless island:

not a spot omitted,

not a single defect,

I am all like chocolate,

of fresh-brewed tea

from Sri Lanka, but

for one pale streak

under the wedding band.








[ lots ]



lots of knives

but only one cuts

lots of pens

but only one writes

lots of men

but I love only you

maybe at last you will

sharpen the knives?



——————————————

Vera Pavlova
Album for the Young (and Old)
Knopf 2017
translated from the Russian by Steven Seymour

DOWN BY LAW ~

COULD BE ~

Lasting

What a beautiful day

No matter how trite that sounds —

After days on end of heat and foul weather

Rain, storms, even tornadoes south of us

Which brought us hail here in the woods

Sounding off the steel roof like sparks!

Today the breezes are back cool across my face

Along my ears, on the cheeks, over the brow, to the hands

I imagine this happening to anyone close by

I’ll read a few more poems by Santoka before I head

Off to the woods with splitting maul & wedges

An old apple tree fallen to the ground awaits

In short lengths I cut it into last week with that heat

The bugs, the mud, the last of the blossoms on the tree

Which I waited to fully blossom and die before I returned

With the breezes, my saw, the faintest aroma of the bloom

Hurricane

It isn’t right

to have the sea

come to us from

the sky but on

Sunday that’s what

it did and every

one and every thing

that was once born

paid for it whether

there or not which

is the real message and

shape of this earth

Could Be

This has to be love —

she could be anywhere else

she could be under soft quilts asleep

she could be in a warm kitchen stirring

she could be in a playground watching what she loves

she could be in the garden dreaming

she could be walking the dog, petting the cat, singing with a bird

she could be by the ocean with all the day ahead

she could be in another's arms but no

she could be and is in my arms

beneath the driftwood of huge trees brought down with a flood

this little cave we've made under horizontal trees

it looks possibly dangerous and if it all collapsed

we would be crushed

and she has joined me there

while it rains

Garbage

The ugliest house

on the road

has all the butterflies

————————————— 

Bob Arnold

BEAUTIFUL   DAYS

Longhouse

— End of the book, see you in a few weeks with more

EPISTROPHIES ~

R E A D       M E

BEAT MEMORIES (ALLEN GINSBERG) ~

M O R E !

The exhibition was organized by Sarah Greenough, senior curator of photography at the National Gallery of Art, where it had its debut in 2010.

THE FORMAL IMAGINATION OF POETRY ~

R E A D      M E

A fine poet, interesting thinker,

acknowledgeable in the ways

of poetry, but not one to draw from

any poet other than compatible to the usual syllabus;

the most Hass let's his hair down is drawing an example of

Ted Berrigan and Jackson MacLow —

no Bob Kaufman here, Thomas McGrath or Janine Pommy Vega.

Where Hass has intrigued me the most are his informal

and off-the cuff introductions he presents from his post at the

University of California Berkeley reading series.

CHARLES SIMIC ~

READ     ME


This book was gifted to me knowing, as the presenter
does, that I read everything by Simic. Simic actually
advises this for poets, young ones, so I must still be young: read
everything and pretty much do your own thing as a writer.
He left off: and accept the consequences.
We are throttled by poetry schools, foundations, houses,
frat-party poetics, mean and lean criticizing threshers,
swords with blood on them, so you take your chances writing
as you wish. But please do so. I want to read you. I am reading
this new Simic slender book of poems in early June and
because I am always reading, and writing, and doing as I wish,
this won't appear until sometime in July.
The Birdhouse is nicely bottled up and singing.
If we're still here.
There's a Menace in the White House
also doing as he wishes.

The Week

Monday comes around with a new tattoo

It won't show us and here's Tuesday

Walking its latest nightmare on a leash

And Wednesday blind as the rain tapping

On a windowpane and Thursday sipping

Bad coffee served by a pretty waitress

And Friday lost in a confusion of sad

And happy faces and Saturday flashing

Like a pinball machine in the morgue

And Sunday with a head of crucified Christ

Hanging sideways in a bathroom mirror

———————————

CHARLES SIMIC

DONALD JUDD ~

A     S E L E C T I O N

O F     W R I T I N G S

BEST KEPT SECRET ~

OLD BACK ROAD STORY ~

Old Back Road Story

Saw Cliff the day before in his backhoe

moving a good size rock in the jaws

of his bucket, he stopped a moment

and flipped open his cab door to talk

said they’d be tearing out the small

back woods road bridge the next day

we looked at the sign maybe Cliff

or some other worker had scribbled

a notice for all travelers to note:

———————————

bridge closed

june 22 from

7 am to 7 pm

if any Q

please call ...

————————————

Cliff then asked us :

its June 22

tomorrow,

right?

we also got

a feeling

Cliff or some-

one ran out of room

to write “Questions”

and that’s why on the sign

they used a “Q”

the writing looks like

it was written by god

if god was a bear

I ask Cliff what they

are going to do with

all the old hemlock

timbers from the deck

of the bridge?

gee, I don’t know, Bob

do you want’em?

I nod yes

he nods okay

consultation over

the next day, in driving rain,

all the way up the back road

a good mile comes Cliff in

his front end loader, every old

hemlock long plank and timber

he’s got balanced like a pro and

he raises his wide bucket high

and swings right through our stone-

wall barway and meets me with a grin to

his grin as I point to an edge of the

woodlot where he sets the whole load

down soft as an egg

————————————— 

Bob Arnold

BEAUTIFUL   DAYS

Longhouse

BUCKETS ~

HEIDEGGER'S HUT ~

R E V I E W

M. I. T.

W R I T I N G     H U T S

FURTHER ON UP THE ROAD ~

JAIME DE ANGULO ~

Counterpoint, 2017

———————————————

This is about as good as it gets for us awaiting more word from

someone, anyone, on the life, pathways, and Old Coyote

wisdom of Jaime De Angulo — his mysterious and sure

linguistic and ethnographic work — and be assured that

eastern native but gone to the west coast for very good reason

Andrew Schelling would be the one to draw up buckets and buckets 

of well-stitched history and folklore for a marvelous telling

of De Angulo biography 

(Andrew insists it isn't, but it is, or the best we have at the moment)

Big Sur rugged characters, San Francisco poets who visited

(and learned something)

Native American lore, and just what happens when one

is this independent in the churning American machine age

[ BA ]

OUR LOSS ~

Mr. Liu was imprisoned and unable to accept the Nobel Peace Prize in person in Oslo in 2010. The actress Liv Ullmann read from Mr. Liu’s “I Have No Enemies: My Final Statement to the Court.”

CreditOdd Andersen/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images 

LIU  XIAOBO

M O R E

ARBORETUM ~

Arboretum

                                

                                           for Ronald Baatz

No rain today, thankfully (too much to do) but maybe tomorrow. Whereas the daylilies are now in full abundance, but it took a fight. A fight? With flowers? No, with deer! Three in particular that we have been at war with for years now, as the mother deer teaches her young the succulents. Why wouldn’t she?! We don’t mind the now and then flowers they pluck for breakfast on the outer edges but we won’t tolerate them in the full backyard where the best grow. Honestly, in the thousands. I worked for decades for people, wealthy, who often shunned the common orange man daylily, so I’d load up my pickup truck with everything they wanted “gone.” Gone was to our house. They even grew tired of the expensive daylilies bought as bulbs and multiplying beyond their imaginations so they were often also “gone” ones. More for our house. It’s how you gain and gain flowers and watch a garden grow, and gain and gain books, thus make a library inside the house. So last night, near midnight I was again out in the yard, barefoot, wet cool grass, the moon of Saturday night still with me, chasing the three deer; gallopers! with my strong beam flashlight and a stone or two. They never get hit, the strong beam flashlight seems to scare them like a flying saucer. I give chase. In the early evening if they dare to show, I will go out with my pellet rifle and sting one or two. That seems to send a quick message down the clothesline that, “This guy means business.” “Yeah but the other places have mean dogs.” "Yeah but he has a rifle.” So the message is getting across and we’ve saved the daylily splendor for this year. Last year the deer about wiped us out. We also spray peppermint oil on all the flowers. That takes a good half hour with a spray jar and determination.

Look at me, I haven’t even mentioned the woodchucks! A family have set into the new barn I built last summer. Don’t blame them, nice barn, filled with firewood, plenty of access and like a virtual hotel. Usually the snakes get the firewood locations but now the woodchucks are in. We discovered them when they ate every one of Susan’s potted flowers. That was money down the drain. We sent out a stern warning in real words when we saw the woodchucks and we knew they could hear us. “Do more of that and I bring out the .22 rifle next time.” No pellet gun. And I’m a pacifist (ask my draft board) but I’ve spoken with Gandhi over the years and he reminds me that we do share, but we don’t become overcome. So far no woodchuck on a daylily = friends. I showed Sweetheart where to put her new choice of potted flowers, along with the cherry tomatoes: upstairs on the bedroom porch. Fill it up to the brim, I said to Sweetheart, make it an outdoor greenhouse. Arboretum.

  [ BA ]

HENRY DAVID THOREAU ~

Someone Is 200 Years Old Today

R E A D      M E