TRANSISTOR RADIO ~

It's 1963.

Your transistor radio is on.

It's always on.

The batteries never ran out!

On the beach, on your bike, in your back pocket

of the bluejeans. Radio.

As someone asked innocently enough,

"Where'd this music go?"

[BA]

POETS WHO SLEEP #30 ~

 

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

APPLE ~

 

RE-READING WOODY GUTHRIE ~

 

The three great scramble-bound books

in American literature —

Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn

Woody Guthrie's Bound for Glory

Jack Kerouac's On the Road

add to your Guthrie reading list

this treasury of the songwriter's

art work, many seen here for

the first time, and extracted from

the homemade books and notebooks

Guthrie made and shared with

family & friends.

Be a friend.

[BA]

                                                                       Rizzoli, 2007

 

RE-READING FRANZ MARC ~

Of all the marvelous books on Franz Marc's paintings

this smaller book is one of my favorites and the

author Peter-Klaus Schuster does such a wonderful job

his name deserves to be on the cover! at the very least 

on the spine. Here is Schuster's thinking, "A painter

meets a woman poet whose personality differs from his own

almost to the point of contradiction, and yet he calls her "sister"

—that in a nutshell, is the story of the friendship between Franz Marc and

Else Lasker-Schuler." More on Else Lasker-Schuler in the future Birdhouse.

In this book we are offered a little over a year's correspondence from Marc to

Lasker-Schuler, known here as "Prince Jussuf", all through

a series of Marc's watercolors, from very late 1912 to the

spring of 1914. The heartbreak is that Marc was inducted into

WW I in 1914 and would be killed in the siege of

Verdun on March 4, 1916. A further darkness is that

these postcards were almost lost to the Nazis in 1939

as part of their campaign against "degenerate art." 

Quick hands by a married couple, Sofie and Emanuel Fohn,

saved the Marc postcards with an exchange of works by

 German Romantic artists for the expressionist artist's

exquisite postcards. 

This book holds the story.

[ BA ]

 

ETTA JAMES ~

 

The year Carson was born (1985)

we took him to hear Etta James

outdoors, Max Roach was there

as well. For the last twenty years

Carson has worked in a record store

that he manages with his own flair,

and he's played the drums for

thirty years.

It only makes sense that

Chuck Berry shows up after,

and with, Etta James on this

video — or he has while

I was watching.

[ BA ]

GIUSEPPE UNGARETTI

 GIUSEPPE UNGARETTI

  "I Know My Modus Operandi"

Translated by Walter Franceschi

$10

order direct! from us

via Paypal, please use our email address ~ poetry@sover.net

or check to~

Longhouse, Publishers & Booksellers

PO Box 2454

West Brattleboro, Vermont 05303

RE-READING PAUL METCALF ~

 

I've yet to part with this issue of the wonderful

Lillabulero, circa 1973 and at an unbeatable price

of $2 when you consider what was coming inbetween

the covers — all devoted to Paul Metcalf — to this day

one of the sterling iconoclast's of American literature,

all his movements slide between poetry & prose, and one

isn't quite sure what this great grandson of Herman Melville

was, meant in the best of terms, like standingstill and listening

carefully and not quite pinpointing what that bird call is.

Russell Banks, yet to be famous, will begin to reveal what

will make him famous in how he handles our unidentified

birdcall in a fine rolling and tumbling interview with Paul Metcalf

between small town New Hampshire and small town Berkshire hills.

It remains one of the reasons I keep this issue of Lillabulero between the large three

volume set of Metcalf's collected works from Coffee House Press.

During the time of the interview Metcalf has written most of his major works,

age 54, and is wondering to himself what will be next.

Banks has fished from the author about as good as you can fish.

Contributors to this festschrift is about as good as it gets at this time:

McCord, Enslin, Jonathan Williams, Thomas Meyer, Corbett,

Grossinger, Sukenick.

I also keep this issue for the fine author's photo above.

[ BA ]

POETS WHO SLEEP #29 ~

 

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

RUTH ASAWA ~

 

R U T H    A S A W A

Of all the books now available on the life and

work of Ruth Asawa, this one is by far my favorite.

Less on the academic and mumbo-jumbo text and cleanly

told by two authorities, Tiffany Bell and Robert Storr,

this tall silvery volume is high on class and

exquisite throughout with profuse illustrations

chosen wisely for content, chronology and appeal,

never losing sight at how to present an artist to the public

with well fashioned bookmaking design, typography

and profound full page plates of Asawa.

It's a dream.

[ BA ]

David Zwirner Books

2018

PENCIL ~

 

Bosnia and Herzegovina

                                  Jasenko Djordjevic works on his miniature sculpture on a graphite pencil. 

                                  The self-taught artist crafts tiny sculptures on pencil graphite, using nothing 

                                   but hand precision and a sharp knife    Photograph: Dado Ruvić/Reuters

JOHN LUTHER ADAMS ~

 

LIKE IT WAS (JAMES KOLLER) ~

 

L I S T E N    T O    J I M

REMEMBERING HELEN LAFRANCE ("I couldn't say $100") ~

 

HELEN LAFRANCE

RE-READING JOANNE KYGER ~

Destruction



First of all do you remember the way a bear goes through

a cabin when nobody is home? He goes through

the front door. I mean he really goes through it. Then

he takes the cupboard off the wall and eats a can of lard.



He eats all the apples, limes, dates, bottled decaffeinated

coffee, and 35 pounds of granola. The asparagus soup cans

fall to the floor. Yum! He chomps up Norwegian crackers

stashed for the winter. And the bouillon, salt, pepper,

paprika, garlic, onions, potatoes.



                                                   He rips the Green Tara

poster from the wall. Tries the Coleman Mustard. Spills

the ink, tracks in the flour. Goes up stairs and takes

a shit. Rips open the water bed, eats the incense and

drinks the perfume. Knocks over the Japanese tansu

and the Persian miniature of a man on horseback watching

a woman bathing.



                           Knocks Shelter, Whole Earth Catalogue,

Planet Drum, Northern Mists, Trucks Tracks, and

Women's Sports into the oozing water bed mess.



                                                                       He goes

down stairs and out the back wall. He keeps on going

for a long way and finds a good cave to sleep it all off.

Luckily he ate the whole medicine cabinet, including stash

of LSD, Peyote, Psilocybin, Amanita, Benzedrine, Valium

and aspirin.



________________
Joanne Kyger





a forever classic ~ with its strength of natural storytelling and aplomb
combined with a sheer intelligence of what the poet knows from cultures
and the cabin