RE-READING A CORDIALL WATER ~

This is my favorite M.F. K. Fisher

book of many many — and it must

be this edition, partial to the lovely size

and design of North Point Books. 

Jacket design by Wesley B. Tanner.

Writing straight from the wild.

[ BA ]

RE-READING THOMAS BERNHARD ~

Perhaps best read

after reading all of Bernhard

so far translated into English —
written in 1980, a decade
before the author's untimely passing —
Bernhard takes on all the literary prizes,
the farcical pomp and ceremony,
and of course takes all the money and runs.



Knopf 2010

POETS WHO SLEEP #13 ~

P O E T S     W H O     S L E E P

______________________

                                           drawn & scribed by Bob Arnold

all drawings

copyright

Bob Arnold


The complete series to date ~ please link here

RE-READING INGER CHRISTENSEN ~

from alphabet



10


June nights exist, June nights exist,

the sky at long last as if lifted to heavenly

heights, simultaneously sinking, as tenderly as

when dreams can be seen before they are dreamed; a space

as if dizzied, as if filled with whiteness, an hourless



chiming of insects and dew, and no one in

this gossamer summer, no one comprehends that

early fall exists, aftertaste, afterthought;

just these reeling sets of restless ultrasounds

exist, the bat's ears of jade

turned toward the ticking haze;

never has the tilting of the planet been so pleasant,

never the zine-white nights so white,



so defencelessly dissolved, gently ionized and

white, never the limit of invisibility so nearly

touched; June, June, your Jacob's ladders,

your sleeping creatures and their dreams exist,

a drift of galactic seed between

earth so earthly and sky so heavenly,

the vale of tears so still, so still, and tears

sinking, sinking like groundwater back



into earth; Earth; Earth in its trajectory

around the sun exists, Earth on its journey

along the Milky Way, Earth on its course with

its cargo of jasmine, jasper, iron,

iron curtains, omens, jubilation, Judas's kiss

kissed right and left, and virgin anger in

the streets, Jesus of salt; with the shadow of the

jacaranda over the river, with gyrfalcons, jet planes,

and January in the heart, with Jacopo della Quercia's

well Fonte Gaia in Siena and with July

heavy as a bomb, with domestic brains

heart defects, quaking grass and strawberries

the ironwood's roots in the earthworn earth



Earth song by Jayadeva in his mystical

poem from the 12th century, Earth with

the coastline of consciousness blue, with nests where

fisherbird herons exist, with their grey-blue arching

backs, or where bitterns exist, cryptic

and shy, or night herons, egrets,

with the wingbeat variations of hedge sparrows, cranes

and doves; Earth exists with Jullundur, Jabalpur and

the Jungfrau, Jambo, Jogjakarta,

with duststorms, Dutchman's breeches

with water and land masses jolted by tremors

with Judenburg, Johannesburg, Jerusalem's Jerusalem





_______________________
Inger Christensen
alphabet
translated by Susanna Nied
New Directions
2001





Even for New Directions, every Inger Christensen book is a knockout

RE-READING KENT JOHNSON'S HOUSE ~

"ALL BECAUSE OF POETRY I HAVE A BIG HOUSE" 

R E A D      M E

Kent Johnson's imagination and generosity has a superior quality to it, thus his poems and sketches are little miracles. It was one of many reasons I wanted to publish his I ONCE MET which I predict will be the author's best book. Hands down. Hands all over it.
. . .HOUSE is a continuation of this poetic odyssey.

[ BA ]

RE-READING KARIN LESSING ~

Talisman





At the back of the head

a giant

anchors the eyelet sea:



in its jaw, a

bone

is singing: good fortune.







Moraine




Through

rhyme



braided

to thyme



followed

the scent that



tumbles,

breast-



high, dream-

thin.



Un-

thinking,



saw;

blinded,



heard

how they lie



cluster and

stray,



sometimes

seem to float.








Night Song




Cypress,



night's

needle, my



life's

slow gyre,



long night, long



dawn, the

star-

bristled day.







Wind-Gathered




Wind-gathered

             the tidal

air



—gardening

crests.



Nightbells'

alarm:



as many rooms as

tongues.



But from the

prairies' glitter

to the estuary:



the grain.







June Poppies




June

poppies



flush

with the road



opening,

shutting,



the pine

mirrors



out

over the fields



the star-

braced shadows:



all

things



under a name.







Dolls' Houses





I saw

through death's

little door



at Cartier's



the wizened tables,

and chairs.




__________________

Karin Lessing
Collected Poems
Shearsman Books
2010

RE-READING KATHERINE ANNE PORTER ~

Night Blooming Cereus





Upborne by savage dark thorns the paper-lace dramatic flower

Spins in the winds, a dancing somnambulist;

With only a sleep walking witness, no audience for this hour.

The watchful birds are asleep, and the great fist



Of blackness closes leaving within itself no hollow.

There is no breath in this blackness, walk in your sleep and follow

Down to the sea's brim the promise of day, of the morning

Which rises again from the deep; shall not fail, will give warning.



Evening thou bringest all that bright morning scattered,

The bleating flock, the scrambling goats that stray,

And the young child that on the hillrocks scampered,

Comes weary to his mother from his play.

                                                             written 1929, unpublished





________________________________
Katherine Anne Porter







You should read her letters!

RE-READING LUC SANTE ~

I've read all of Luc Sante's books
each a wonder —

and recommend them all

_____________ Yeti Books 2009


R E A D     M E

RE-READING SAROYAN ~

I have always loved the size of this book — smaller

than most hardcovers — and the title and the photo

design taken by the author in some photo booth 

where he kept his hat on and took his hat off.

I'm now ten years older than old man Saroyan

when he wrote this book between living in Paris

and Fresno, 1967-1968, and I have finally

caught up with the great old man since I

first read the book in 1972 when I was twenty

and can now see I either missed or didn't quite understand

yet how very good and wise and understanding this book is.

But I certainly felt something because I've now read the book

every decade since 1972. It's my favorite of all the

many Saroyan books, and if I had to grab

one book rushing out of the house I'd be 

pleased that my hand was holding this book when I looked outside.

I'm rereading the book during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Saroyan caught the Spanish influenza and survived in 1918.

In 1968 he is living through the Hong Kong Flu.

Nothing ever stopped him, not even death. I'm reading him.

[ BA ]

The Dial Press 1970

POETS WHO SLEEP #12 ~

P O E T S     W H O     S L E E P

______________________

                                               drawn & scribed by Bob Arnold

all drawings

copyright

Bob Arnold


The complete series to date ~ please link here

RE-READING HAYDEN CARRUTH ~

My Meadow

Well, it's still the loveliest meadow in all Vermont. I believe that truly, yet for years have hardly seen it, I think, having lived too long with it — until I went to clean up the mess of firewood left by the rural electric co-op when they cut my clump of soft maples "threatening" their lines, this morning, the last day of September. My maple leaves were spilled in the grass, deep crimson. I worked with axe and chainsaw, and when I was done I sat on my rock that had housed my fox before the state executed him on suspicion of rabies, and then I looked at my meadow. I saw how it lies between the little road and the little brook, how its borders are birch and hemlock, popple and elm and ash, white, green, red, brown, and gray, and how my grass is composed in smooth serenity. Yet I have hankered for six years after that meadow I saw in Texas near Camp Wood because I discovered an armadillo there and saw two long-tailed flycatchers at their fantastic mating dance in the air. Now I saw my meadow. And I called myself all kinds of a blind Yankee fool — not so much for hankering, more for the quality of my looking that could make me see in my mind what I could not see in my meadow. However, I saw my serviceberry tree at the edge of the grass where little pied asters, called Farewell- to-Summer, made a hedge, my serviceberry still limping from last winter's storms, and I went and trimmed it. The small waxy pointed leaves were delicate with the colors of coral and mallow and the hesitating blush of the sky at dawn. When I finished I stepped over my old fence and sat by my brook on moss sodden from last night's rain and got the seat of my britches wet. I looked at my brook. It curled over my stones that looked back at me again with the pathos of their Paleozoic eyes. I thought of my discontents. The brook, curled in its reflections of ferns and asters and bright leaves, was whispering something that made no sense. Then I closed my eyes and heard my brook inside my head. It told me — and I saw a distant inner light like the flash of a waterdrop on a turning leaf — it told me maybe I have lived too long with the world. _______________ Hayden Carruth If You Call This Cry A Song Countryman Press 1983 HC once took me up to his meadow, and his large garden, all along his brook ("Foote") that also ran by his house, a place Susan and I found by guessing "that's where a poet might live" and by golly we were right, it was 1974 and we would spend our honeymoon, unannounced, at the home of Hayden and Rose Marie Carruth. They were that generous and we were that silly & young. During that same visit, or another one, Hayden and I hiked the dirt road his house was on, and it was a round hike that went around Marshall's farm, a good friend of the poet. We walked in the night since Hayden worked through the night. I always felt "My Meadow" somehow encompassed every poem Hayden wrote.  [ BA ]

RE-READING THE SIGNATURE OF ALL THINGS ~

The Signature Of All Things

I

My head and shoulders, and my book
In the cool shade, and my body
Stretched bathing in the sun, I lie
Reading beside the waterfall –
Boehme's 'Signature of all Things.'
Through the deep July day the leaves
Of the laurel, all the colors
Of gold, spin down through the moving
Deep laurel shade all day. They float
On the mirrored sky and forest
For a while, and then, still slowly
Spinning, sink through the crystal deep
Of the pool to its leaf gold floor.
The saint saw the world as streaming
In the electrolysis of love.
I put him by and gaze through shade
Folded into shade of slender
Laurel trunks and leaves filled with sun.
The wren broods in her moss domed nest.
A newt struggles with a white moth
Drowning in the pool. The hawks scream,
Playing together on the ceiling
Of heaven. The long hours go by.
I think of those who have loved me,
Of all the mountains I have climbed,
Of all the seas I have swum in.
The evil of the world sinks.
My own sin and trouble fall away
Like Christian's bundle, and I watch
My forty summers fall like falling
Leaves and falling water held
Eternally in summer air.

2

Deer are stamping in the glades,
Under the full July moon.
There is a smell of dry grass
In the air, and more faintly,
The scent of a far off skunk.
As I stand at the wood's edge,
Watching the darkness, listening
To the stillness, a small owl
Comes to the branch above me,
On wings more still than my breath.
When I turn my light on him,
His eyes glow like drops of iron,
And he perks his head at me,
Like a curious kitten.
The meadow is bright as snow.
My dog prows the grass, a dark
Blur in the blur of brightness
I walk to the oak grove where
The Indian village was once.
There, in blotched and cobwebbed light
And dark, dim in the blue haze,
Are twenty Holstein heifers,
Black and white, all lying down,
Quietly together, under
The huge trees rooted in the graves.

3

When I dragged the rotten log
From the bottom of the pool,
It seemed heavy as stone.
I let it lie in the sun
For a month; and then chopped it
Into sections, and split them
For kindling, and spread them out
To dry some more. Late that night;
After reading for hours,
While moths rattled at the lamp,
The saints and the philosophers
On the destiny of man;
I went out on my cabin porch,
And looked up through the black forest
At the swaying islands of stars.
Suddenly I saw at my feet,
Spread on the floor of night, ingots
Of quivering phosphorescence,
And all about were scattered chips
Of pale cold light that was alive.

(1946)

_________________________

Kenneth Rexroth

The Signature of all Things

New Directions. 1949

One of my desert island books, which I'll be taking to the desert island
in a huge trunk of other books — I'd take a boat of books but it would look silly —
will be Rexroth's Collected Poems from Copper Canyon, the old Copper Canyon before
Sam Hamill was kicked out — and it was Sam who guided this great book into shape.

[ BA ]