GREAT MAESTRO SHAJARIAN ~

 

S H A J A R I A N

RE-READING RUSSIAN FOLKTALES ~

Vassilisa the Beautiful

Sister Alyonushka
and Brother Ivanushka
/
The White Duck


R E A D      H E R E




Cozak
Moscow
1970s



Jim Koller gave us these books
as gifts long long ago —
nobody else would have.

RE-READING DRUMMOND HADLEY ~

 

Cutting Loose in the Springtime

I.

Billy Brown, being an old Texas cowboy,

Was a hard and fast tie man.

That means he tied his rope solid,

Or fast, to the saddle horn, as against dallying.

Dallying means to take turns of the rope around the saddle horn,

To hold an animal you've got roped,

So if something happens and you start to get into a wreck,

You can let your rope slide around the saddle horn,

Or take those dallies off the horn.

Billy only dallied roping little calves in a corral,

'Cause, he said, you had to learn it when you were young,

Or you couldn't do it well enough to keep from losing

A finger, or a hand, or a thumb.

Billy carried a knife strapped to his chaps right above his thigh bone,

So if he had a cow brute, or some critter roped,

And he was tied hard and fast,

And was maybe riding a spinning, pitching colt,

With the coils of that rope winding around him,

He could pull his knife free, and start cutting loose.

II.

Sometimes, Spring comes whirling up these desert canyons

From the South so strong, I'd cut loose and go a-prancing. . .

With one of these light seeds that flies up towards the canyon rim.

Sometimes, those sweet scents of the Sprintime

Come whirling up these draws from Mexico so strong,

When the blood-weed starts greening up,

And the mourning doves start calling long,

Long into the beginning of the morning.

III.

When the Spring winds come blowing down the ridge lines,

And you feel them blowing along the creased lines of your skin,

Who would tell Springtime to be still,

Or to go away from the rims of these dry canyons and hills,

Till all the honey and all the humming bees,

And those light blue eyes are gone?

Who would tell the Springtime to be still?

___________________________

Drummond Hadley

Voice of the Borderlands

Rio Nuevo 2005

LISTEN TO DRUMMOND HADLEY

_______________________________________

I had a phone call once from Drummond Hadley.

Nice surprise! Drum was calling me in the very

early days of the cell phone, those big submarine sandwich

size things. Drum said he wanted to tell me how much

he liked my book of poems Where Rivers Meet, and 

he said he had driven his pickup truck to the

highest section of his vast ranch in 

Arizona (Drum was a real cowboy)

so he could tell me. With guys like

Drum, it's important that you know

that he means to get across.

Voice of the Borderlands

is a masterpiece at stories

and true characters getting across

in elegiac and narrative poems,

side-glances and the great unknown.

Go there. Get lost. Be found.

[ BA ]

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