RE-READING LUCILLE CLIFTON ~

Memphis




                      . . . at the river i stand,

                      guide my feet, hold my hand

i was raised

on the shore

of lake erie

e is for escape

there are more s'es

in mississippi

than my mother had

sons

this river never knew

the kingdom of dahomey

the first s

begins in slavery

and ends in y

on the bluffs

of memphis

why are you here

the river wonders

northern born

looking across buffalo

you look into canada toronto

is the name of the lights

burning at night

the bottom of memphis

drops into the nightmare

of a little girl's fear

in fifteen minutes

they could be here

i could be there

mississippi

not the river the state

schwerner

and chaney

and goodman

medgar

schwerner

and cheney

and goodman

and medgar

my mother had one son

he died gently near lake erie

some rivers flow back

toward the beginning

i never learned to swim

will i float or drown

in this mississippi

on the mississippi river

what is this southland

what has this to do with egypt

or dahomey

or with me

so many questions

northern born

_________________________________

Was it ten years ago now, or longer?

when Greg Joly and I read on the streets

to earn money for Katrina Relief, and this was

a poem I liked to read, and Greg had poems he

was ready to read and sometimes a brave soul

wandered across the street from the bar, plied

on some juice and he wanted to read, he didn't

care what. We let him. And Jim Koller came down

from Maine and read Ferlinghetti and Louise Landes Levi

stood in the December cold day and read with me and then

we went out with Susan and had hot Korean soup.

Lucille Clifton long ago came to Brattleboro and read

upstairs in the library and she was friendly vicious.

One of the finest readings I ever heard.

[ BA ]

Lucille Clifton

Blessing the Boats

New and Selected Poems

1988-2000

BOA Editions

2000

POETS WHO SLEEP #26 ~

 

P O E T S     W H O     S L E E P

______________________

                                           drawn & scribed by Bob Arnold

The complete series to date ~ please link here

FAREWELL ~

My Mom

Penny Arnold

Belfast, Northern Ireland, 6 January 1928 ~ Naples, Florida, 22 November, 2020   

Susan and I love that photograph of Mom, fully Ireland. There are no stonewalls anywhere in the world like the Irish ones. The Germans and Swiss have their own style, so do the Italians and certainly the Chinese (The Great Wall!) and Vermont has them as well and I’ve built plenty of them. But the Irish wall seems most in play not quite finished, as if the wall builder has gone off for a pint, or a smoke, or is visiting, and the walls wait there, centuries, for a completion and one will never come. Ireland ever growing. Very organic walls.

[ BA ]

On Raglan Road, The Dubliners

(Patrick Kavanagh)

 

RE-READING GERALD MURNANE ~

 

The first time I read this little powerhouse engine

of a book I clearly had no idea what I was doing here —

I simply read the book with pleasure, but there is

no pleasure here (though there is), it's a workout,

and so for the second reading I spent two weeks

reading its railroad line 132 pages.

It may as well be 132 miles.

Never a slog. You won't believe

how well this writer will airlift you.

The third book in a straight line reading

I did over a month starting with Murnane, then Inger Christensen

and finishing with Hemingway, where I went from

A Moveable Feast straight back into the

short stories from Up In Michigan (which Stein disliked)

and then not messing around to The Big Two-Hearted River

(Kent and I believe the greatest fishing story ever written).

An onion sandwich, dipped in river water.

[ BA ]

Farrar, Straus, Giroux

2017

RE-READING NICK TOSCHES ~

"When God put His mouth to the nostrils of Adam,

there was probably opium on His breath."

Nick Tosches

R E A D     M E

R E A D     M O R E

Bloomsbury, 2002

In our early days of bookselling, Nick Tosches
would call up by phone and purchase books
or magazines from us. The lone wolf.
 Our 17 year old son of the time once took a call
while we were away, he still speaks of it.


[ BA ]

RE-READING ELLIOT CHAZE ~

If there's one crime novel Jim Thompson

could have written, and it would have been

one of his best, but he didn't, because Elliot Chaze did,

it's the rough & tumble Black Wings Has My Angel ~

reissued by the literary godmothers and godfathers

of The New York Review of Books after it

was first published as a pulp from

 Gold Medal Books in 1953

smack dab in the Jim Thompson era.

It's an armored car heist.

There's a bad boy and a bad girl.

What are you waiting for?

[ BA ]

BONFIRE ~

I went out last night at 1130 to finally douse the lingering bonfire embers with the three 5 gallon pails of rainwater I had gathered for the fini of the bonfire after almost 48 hours. It had burned down to one final speck of log and the fire looked perky enough to carry it off through a few more hours but I had to end things and bed down. The bonfire had started huge, logs and logs and brush and stumps. All from clearing work we had done over the last few years. We thought, for a change, we might hire an excavator to come in and sweep the land clean but the price was far beyond our means, so you gather for days and burn. Tonight I carried out with me my Makita hand lantern that can go with a bright light up to eight hours on one battery. Certainly the lantern lasts longer than any of my power tools. I was going to set the lantern down on one of the large table top pine stumps I had saved from all the cutting the last few days. The way I cut, and the old pine trees toppled over or rolled, I was able to make some furniture pieces, as Sweetheart called them, so we had a love seat, two chairs, and one large table. Come on over for dinner! But what was that so close by in the young maple tree, on the lowest branch, six feet off the ground? And staring right at me. And not at all bothered by my sudden appearance, or the big light, and in fact it appears like my visitor-friend has been perched over the bonfire all the time I have been away as if guarding the fire for me while away, or else simply enjoying being around a camp fire light. What is it about a camp fire and all of us? We seem to want to gather by it. And here was a barred owl, not more than ten feet from me, not stirring in the least, hunched there before I was, and liking my company. I’ll never get this close to a barred owl again. This friend, and I believe it is an old friend — one I will leave unnamed but one Sweetheart and I in unison one day said aloud when we had another barred owl with us — in a snowstorm, again on the edge of the woods, and again watching over us, our work, our life, and wanting to be there. No matter how I moved with my rake and the buckets of water stirring into the hot coals bright as any universe there flat on the ground, did this bother my owl friend. When the owl wanted to leave it would leave. It would be a short hop from facing me to not facing me and then with a curve of the hand swoop down off the branch and be away. That’s how I would describe it all to Sweetheart with my hand when we were together in the morning. In the morning I went out to the bonfire to fetch my rake and retrieve the buckets. There was the maple tree. Just a maple tree.

[ BA ]

 

POETS WHO SLEEP #25 ~

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 ~

 

Re-reading not the poetry this time

which is wonderful and immense,

but the poet's essays, slim book, and overall

her background and working methods as a

writer. A poet one can put beside your

reading of Newton and Blake, and no fooling.

[ BA ]

New Directions

FUTURE PLANS ~

• 
  
• 
  
• 
  
   

CRIMINAL ACTIVITY ~

 

RE-READING GIOVANNI PASCOLI ~

Birthplace



Dream of a summer day.



Limitless cicadas

trilled and quivered.

Wind from the north

whipped crumpled leaves

through a line of trees.



Sun fell between elms

in strips of dust:

From the sky, two clouds

hung threadbare:

white brushed



across wide blue air.



Tamarisk shrubs,

pomegranate trees, the far

throb of a threshing machine

and the silvery swell

of the evening call to prayer. . .



Where was I? The bell

for the prayer said where,

in tears, while a dog

bayed at a stranger

who walked by, head bowed.





_________________
Giovanni Pascoli
Selected Poems
translated by Taije Silverman with
Marina Della Putta Johnston
Princeton 2019 






Tell me you don't have the outdoors circulating through you