RE-READING GENNADY AYGI ~

And a cloud is floating, a round cloud,

like a cap on my head,

and my time passes, like a dream

dreamed without sleep.

________________

I was back reading Gennady Aygi

in late July — muggy wet weather

blasted by a now and then breezy lovely 

sunny day to ride the bicycle (we rode

the bicycles on the muggy wet days too),

each book beautifully presented by Peter France

Salute — to Singing; Time of Gratitude;

Winter Revels and Ever Further into the Snow

and so many of his other books on my shelves

________________________

P E T E R     F R A N C E  ~  I N T E R V I E W

About One More Wood

From this little wood,

at last,

for ever or for years

the mushrooms have gone.

This happened slowly,

over thirty years.

And now, as I think back,

this disappearance, their "going"

seems one single action,

like the dying away

of a long-lived orchestra

of a long-lived choir.

take care little mushrooms

RE-READING EDWARD FIELD ~

 

E D W A R D     F I E L D

Susan Sontag brushes by through this wonderful

stringy text, mush-mouthed with flavored gossip

and a nicely balanced personal feel. So expect a bit less Sontag

and much more Alfred Chester, Paul Bowles,

Ralph Pomeroy, Frank O'Hara and May Swenson —

none as striking looking as Sontag some might

say, but all of them gay and enriched.

The sincerity Field shows to someone like the all

but forgotten Alfred Chester is quite stunning,

revealing a care the author will give to each chapter. 

Field is still with us, marvelously at 96 years of age.

I've always considered him out of the Grove Press

stable: hip, smart, and telling truths.

[ BA ]

University of Wisconsin Press

2005

POETS WHO SLEEP #19 ~

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

NEW! LOUISE LANDES LEVI ~

 

_________________________

A long poem sequence by Louise from Kyoto, Japan

Foldout booklet in Japanese papers

New! 

Fall 2020

LONGHOUSE

$12

order  through Paypal & use our email 

 address  ~

poetry@sover.net

Free shipping

in USA

Longhouse, Box 2454, West Brattleboro, VT 05303

MORE HARRY SMITH ~

 

H A R R Y     S M I T H

RE-READING ALFRED HAYES ~

_____________________________

Of the three titles in the
New York Review of Books stable
by Alfred Hayes, and I recommend them all,
this is my favorite book, book cover design and
it remains one of the novel examples of male deception.
You read it like you are being chased, and maybe you are.
Even the book typography is graceful and at ease,
which isn't always the case with NYRB titles.
I picked this book up for a re-read sometime over
the summer and it was a one-day full pleasure read.



[ BA ]

DEREK MAHON ~

 

Derek Mahon

Born Belfast Ireland

1941 ~ 2020

ARCHIE SHEPP ~

 

M O R E

RE-READING JIM THOMPSON ~

If you have only one Jim Thompson

book to read ~ this might be the one.

Published the year I was born and today

barked out in multiple editions, the book

has never gone away, become dated, or

softened. Made into at least

two films, with various other adaptations

and still nothing comes close to what

you're going to go through reading the book.

Thompson aligns with David Goodis and

Chester Himes as my top three in the

era that swept in after the king, Raymond Chandler.

[ BA ]

VISITING JANINE ~

 

The other day we went down to the Catskills to take care of Janine Pommy Vega’s grave site. Ten years ago already we chose the red Vermont granite for her stone, and I asked that “Poet” be all there was on the stone other than her name and date. She looks awful alone there, friends.  Susan noticed that, a woman to woman eye thing. I then took Susan to Philip Guston’s grave, Musa beside him. Now the PC crowd have canceled his very large and important exhibit of art work spanning a life time because it will include his dizzy Klansmen. Wait until 2024 the artsy legislatures command. To see one of those paintings, and I have in backwater Hanover, NH, is something to behold. In the cemetery all is equal so very early in the morning in the rain.

[ BA ]

Grasshopper, good singer!

Take care of my tomb

when I die

Janine loved this poem by Issa

translated by Nanao Sakaki

_______________________

UPDATE: GUSTON

photographs: bob arnold 

RE-READING CHICAMAW & FRIENDS ~

Bowie tapped the Gulf of Mexico. 
"You ever seen the ocean, Keechie?"
She shook her head.
"Me neither. I'm almost thirty years old and you know I
never have seen the ocean. Can you beat that? 
Say, how would you like to live on the ocean?"
"Sounds pretty good to me."

____________________

I’ve been down in your territory the last few days re-reading West Texas and Oklahoma district books: The Killer Inside Me with relentless Jim Thompson, and now Edward Anderson, harsh right-winger from Oklahoma and his Thieves Like Us. Anderson sold the book to Hollywood for the film They Live By Night and got himself $500 for it, his second book, thoroughly grubby rich armed robbery stuff, but nothing seemed to help his career because of himself. Dead in his early 60s. By the energy in each Thompson novel you’d think he was made from electricity or kerosene and should be alive to this day. I never read a bad or weak book by him. I may go back and re-read a bunch of other books since I have them all, plus a biography I always liked that I keep on display out in The Studio part of the bookshop that no one ever buys. We may be talking about a world gone by. Usually the one I liked best.

[ BA ~ to ~ J.D. ]

Cathy O' Donnell & Farley Granger in the film
'They Live By Night'
directed by Nicholas Ray
1948

~ If you want film noir at one of its best,
start here.

POETS WHO SLEEP #18 ~

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 PHILIP WHALEN ~

 

Further Notice

I can't live in this world

And I refuse to kill myself

Or let you kill me

The dill plant lives, the airplane

My alarm clock, this ink

I won't go away

I shall be myself —

Free, a genius, an embarrassment

Like the Indian, the buffalo

Like Yellowstone National Park.

                                                            22:ix:56

__________________________

Philip Whalen

The Collected Poems

edited by Michael Rothenberg

Wesleyan University Press, 2007

____________________________

For nearly any other collected poems

one can almost assume cracking the book open

to the middle will well provide the reader

with some of the best poetry by the poet.

Not so Philip Whalen.

For the last 50 years I guided my Whalen trajectory

through my favorite book of his, On Bear's Head,

a book devised and brought into existence through the

tough work of James Koller, Bill Brown and Don Carpenter

after a little fight with the co-publisher Harcourt & Brace.

Coyote Books was the rightful instigator, as usual.

Whalen was hot from the start — say after he gets through

his apprenticeship in the 40s— from the 50s onward

he is sailing, and Michael Rothenberg's perfect book

for Whalen: cover jacket design and hundreds of poems

(what more do you need?) plus Whalen's drawings and

doodles and general Philip-energy, it's all here in the Wesleyan

edition and I've come during a virus pandemic and read it all (ALL)

now a second time. Reading Philip Whalen is like bicycling up

a hill while eating an ice-cream cone, and maybe it's a hot day

but it doesn't have to be. Energies transfix. You know you've

got a poet when everyone says he or she is reading him and

no one knows who you're talking about.