A Longhouse Birdhouse

Thursday, February 7, 2019

JOHNNY SHINES (TOO WET TO PLOW) ~

Wednesday, February 6, 2019

I lose you in the wind

I count you among the dead

a necessary rope

between wind and heart

I have nothing to do with this world

if not to burn

I love you in dying

Your absence of repose

a mad wind whistles in your head

you are sick to have laughed

you fled me for a better void

that tore your heart

Tear me up if you want to

my eyes find you in the night

burning with fever

I'm cold at heart I tremble

from the depths of suffering I call you

with an inhuman cry

as if I gave birth

You strangle me like death

I know this miserably

I find you only in agony

you are beautiful like death

All words strangle me

Star pieces the sky

cry like death

strangle

I don't want life

strangling me is a kindness

the star that rises

is cold like a dead woman

Excite me, eyes

I love the night

my heart is black

Push me into the night

everything is false

I suffer

The world feels death

birds fly eyes slashed open

you are somber as a black sky

The festival will begin

in filth and fear

The stars will fall

when death approaches.

You are the horror of the night

I love you like a death rattle

you are weak like death

I love you like delirium

you know that my head dies

you are the immensity the fear

You are beautiful like slaughter

enormous heart I suffocate

your stomach is naked as the night.

You bring me straight to the end

the agony has begun

I have nothing more to tell you

I speak from the grave

and the dead are silent.

Limpid from head to toe

fragile as the dawn

the wind has shattered the heart

For the duration of anguish

the black night is a church

wherein one slaughters a pig

Trembling from head to toe

fragile as death

agony my great sister

You are colder than the earth.

____________________

Georges Bataille (1897 - 1962 )
The Poetry of Georges Bataille
translated and introduction by Stuart Kendall
SUNY Press / NY 2018

Tuesday, February 5, 2019

IZZY YOUNG ~

I Z Z Y Y O U N G

1928 ~ 2019

KAFKA'S LAST TRIAL ~

Cynthia Ozick's sharp-eyed view of the book

must be shared ~

“Though Benjamin Balint’s masterful hunt for Kafka’s rightful ownership begins as a local dispute in an Israeli family court, it soon thickens into modernity’s most bitterly contentious cultural conundrum. Who should inherit Franz Kafka? The woman into whose hands his manuscripts fortuitously fell? Germany, the nation that murdered his sisters but claims his spirit? Israel, asserting a sovereign yet intimate ancestral right? Searing questions of language, of personal bequest, of friendship, of biographical evidence, of national pride, of justice, of deceit and betrayal, even of metaphysical allegiance, burn through Balint’s scrupulous trackings of Kafka’s final standing before the law.” — Cynthia Ozick, author of Foreign Bodies

Norton

2018

"The rise of Nazism put an end to the rich German-Jewish literary

symbiosis that had so decisively shaped both cultures, and to the long and lively Jewish love affair with the German language."

— Benjamin Balint

the opening sentence to chapter 9

"Kafka's Creator"

Monday, February 4, 2019

HEAVEN LAKE (19) ~

You Wouldn’t Believe How

We Have Never Been Apart

In the living room

she sleeps a very good sleep

the sleep of winter like the

forest brook we know now

rolling over into spring and she

rolls too toward me in her sleep

so at the moment she

awakens, looks a bit spring

startled, slowly standing

and now opening her eyes

there she is again

with me

who never went anywhere

who never would go anywhere

I am waiting while she sleeps

see the many blues of her necklace

the freedom of her bare legs

the spill of her sandy hair

for a moment she doesn’t seem to know me

it will be lovely to meet again

Always

Where one

Iris grows

Alone

It would

Look better

As two

Pegleg

we saw the fox at a distance

hopping on three legs and

later went to find his snow

tracks crossing the pond

sure enough — three paws down

one paw up

this morning we found his

tracks closer, climbing the

stairs to a porch and stopping to

look into our bedroom door

Only Child

He is four years old.

Ask him — he will say

He is four years old but

Almost five years old.

It is winter time. Sweetheart

Has gone to town for errands

And I am home for the entire

Afternoon. The snow is deep

Enough to sled, we sled. In

The front yard, in the back

Yard, down the driveway hill

Someone drove their truck up

To visit and we use the tire

Tracks to begin our slide.

After awhile we sled across

The dirt road looking madly

Both ways, stopping above the river.

Its current gushing over ice.

When he was three years old

We all went down there to

Catch “lobsters.” Don’t worry.

Now he is four years old and

Buttons his own shirt in the

Morning, wears clothes like

Me. His hair is long, thick

And blond, perfect to mess

With my hands. After we sled

He shovels snow into the sled

Says it’s rocks and this is a

Dump truck. Cheeks berry ripe.

He explains everything to me.

He is in the backwoods with

No friends. He deals with Jack

The dog, geese, chickens and

Cats like people. Don’t worry.

He wants to know where the

Boot tracks go that disappear

Into the woods. I don’t know.

He reminds me they’re mine.

When we go inside we strip out

Of warm clothes and together

Drink hot chocolate at the kitchen table.

He wants the spoon.

When done he follows me into the

Other room where I sit in a chair

And he climbs onto my lap.

He looks briefly into my eyes,

It’s been a wonderful afternoon.

He burps, laughs in my face.

—————————————

Bob Arnold

Heaven Lake

Longhouse 2018

Sunday, February 3, 2019

ROBERT DESNOS ~

Letter to Youki

My love,

Our suffering would be unbearable if we couldn't think of it as a passing and sentimental illness. Our rediscoveries will adorn our life for at least thirty years. As for me, I'm taking a deep drink of youth and I'll come back to you full of love and strength! During our separation a birthday, mine, was the occasion of a long fantasy about you. Will my letter reach you in time for your birthday? I would've liked to give you 100,000 American cigarettes, a dozen dresses from the great couturiers, an apartment on the Seine, a car, the cottage in the Compiegne forest, the one on Belle-Isle and a little four-sous bouquet. While I'm gone, keep flowers around all the time; I'll pay you back for them. All the rest, I promise it to you later.

But above all else, drink a bottle of good wine and think of me. I hope our friends won't forget to visit you that day. I thank them for their courage and devotion. About a week ago I got a package from J-L Barrault. Kiss him for me, and Madeleine Renaud too; the package is proof my letter got through. I haven't gotten an answer; I'm waiting for one every day. Kiss everyone in the family, Lucien, Aunt Juliet, Georges. If you run into Passeur's brother, give him my best and ask him if he knows anybody who can help you if you need it. What's happening with my books at the printer's? I've got a lot of ideas for poems and novels. I regret not having the freedom or the time to write them. But you can tell Gallimard that within three months after I get back he'll have the manuscript of a love story in an entirely new genre. I'm ending this letter for today.

Today, July 15th, I got four letters from Barrault, Julia, Dr. Benet and Daniel. Thank them apologize for me for not answering. I'm allowed only one letter a month. Still no word from you, but they send me news of you; that will be for the next time. I hope that letter is our life to come.

Robert

Buchenwald

—————————
Robert Desnos
The Voice of Robert Desnos
(Selected Poems)
translated by William Kulik
The Sheep Meadow Press
2004

Saturday, February 2, 2019

RAN BLAKE ~

BILL BATHURST ~ NEW FROM LONGHOUSE 2019 ~

~ Bill's long poem to Billie Holiday ~

written in 1967

published for the first time

Bill Bathurst

Time On My Hands

Longhouse, 2019

First edition

New and limited

A Longhouse limited edition

two page foldout

with decorative label

Signed by the poet

Buy now ~

$15

free shipping

with Paypal

please use our email

poetry@sover.net

Check or money order ~

Longhouse

PO Box 2454

West Brattleboro, Vermont

05303

Friday, February 1, 2019

GET 'ER DUN ~

WAGES OF FEAR (10) ~

eyes wide shut

Thursday, January 31, 2019

ON THOMAS MERTON ~

Thomas Merton, looking younger each year,

in an undated photography in Kentucky

in front of his hermitage

R E A D M E

A mainly Buddhist publisher took a chance on this

Catholic writer and her Catholic subject ~

you can as well.

A lovely addition to the Merton library.

Shambhala

Boulder

2018

Wednesday, January 30, 2019

TERRANCE HAYES / ETHERIDGE KNIGHT ~

I’m reading one more interesting book on an open field theory of poetry and its place, this time by Terrance Hayes and all about Etheridge Knight, a poet I followed closely for almost 50 years, in some ways reminding me of another I love Chester Himes, both ex-prisoners, a great deal of their work being done through the inmate and prison perspective. In other words, always a prisoner once out. Himes took off for Europe (like Baldwin) because of the outcast feeling; Knight took it out on himself with drugs, violence, even to his wives and partners etc., Sonia Sanchez was one, who continued to love him and was always an equal. Long ago I used to read to my all women students in the boarding school each winter “Feeling Fucked Up” one of the most liberated and celebratory poems from that era. The young women were startled then ( 80s ) at the freedom of language. “You can do that?” they’d ask. I told them they could do anything if it improved the page, taking that old saw one more step. Hayes catches the importance of all this time and writes well, including some sketchy loopy ink drawings that are perfect.

Wave Books

TO FLOAT IN THE SPACE BETWEEN

Terrance Hayes