daydreaming w/ Bob Arnold
Did you know Gertrude Stein
pointed Paul Bowles
toward his longtime
hangout of
Tangiers?
Read more!
"Very happy evenings to sit by the fire and read through Holy Ghost. You have been at this particular work of poetry, documenting in unswervingly clean verse, the life around you, that you have built with Susan, for so long. A book like this is doubly enjoyable. One for the clarity and ethos of its poems, unlike anyone else’s these days. And like an intimate extended letter from a long time friend. You may be the only poet I can think of who does something I like to do in poems: show that we live among books. How many volumes of poetry do you read in which no matter what items of life show up, it is as though the poet is shy or even ashamed to depict him or herself as a steady, serious reader? You’ve got gift for portraits of people, mostly the locals of course, and in a Niedecker offhand way you manage to get their vernacular speech into a poem, as well as your own."
_________________
Andrew Schelling
~
Bob Arnold
Holy Ghost
Longhouse 2021
_________________________________
Witness
was the one with you—
whether you knew it
or not
______________________________________
Bob Arnold
212 pages
perfect-bound
$20
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P O E T S W H O S L E E P
Antler — always startling fresh poems
come from this poet, and in a variety
of venues: early book from City Lights FACTORY (1980)
I highly recommend, plus his selected poems of a sort
in LAST WORDS (hope not) will keep you company
for the rest of your life. Born Brad Burdick in Wisconsin
in 1946, whenever I read Antler he seems ageless.
One of my most favorite poems by him
is the one we published
shown above.
[ BA ]
Liberty, You Say
Liberty,
you tell me,
is the most beautiful
thing that exists
on our young
planet.
You can't
live without it;
it's like the oxygen
of the soul.
If you have it,
you can never
lose it,
for you would die
from such immense pain.
It is not conquered.
It is carried humbly,
like an afternoon
in the depths of the heart.
But I who live
and suffer my country
like no one else,
I do not agree
with you.
The people here
have never been free.
For many it no longer matters
if the chain is thick
and gets thicker daily.
It doesn't move them to know
that their country,
like a sad, sweet
swallow
slowly agonizes;
surrounded by the cold
and miserable indifference
of her children.
You also don't
know
the brute dictatorship
we suffer in my country.
Nor have you ever
lost your freedom.
And your laughter
is the happiest
of all the laughter
I know.
Your country
is now a series
of simple mornings
that sing at sunrise
for you and yours.
But one day
we
will
also be free.
Then
we will have
to defend
our liberty
every day,
making deep sacrifices
of tenderness and kindness.
Liberty is
within us,
like the night
is in the dawn,
and by our
resounding will
the digits
of her face
are already marked.
You must also
get used to freedom
in order to love it,
and to guard it
every second,
because it's been
hunted
for a long time
so that its smooth, clear
heart of multitudes
could be clubbed to death.
But above all,
when you don't have it,
when you don't know
the particular details
of her face,
then you should fight
to find her,
to liberate her
from the darkest shadow.
This way, liberty
is the triumph
of those who
have never been truly free.
And once achieved,
they should repeat
the action
every day of their life.
translated by Alejandro Murguia
__________________________
Otto Rene Castillo
Tomorrow Triumphant
Night Heron Books, 1984
Scroll up again and look at that beautiful poet's face.
At age 31, in the early spring 1967, in the remote highlands
of Guatemala, Otto Rene Castillo was burned at the stake after
days of being tortured and mutilated by the Guatemalan Army.
It is said, "Castillo met with dignity the prescribed fate of
captured guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR)
of Guatemala. After years of agitation and exile, he had entered
into armed struggle convinced that it was the only way to liberate
his country from a tragic history of oppression and genocide."
[ BA ]
We lost Mike O'Connor out in his naive land
of the Pacific Northwest — but then the Far East
could also be said to be Mike's native place as well —
sometime this month. I was just receiving the news
from a mutual friend who also sent to me this photograph
of Mike titled "Mike/Old Growth" when we got slammed
up and down in Vermont with a heavy wet snowfall and
all power went bye-bye for a day and night so there
was no access to nothing except the snowmelt pools
I found to fill us up 15 gallons of water for bathing and
dishes, something Mike would well understand.
Mike's book of poems The Rainshadow remains one
of my standby classics — built, indeed, out of old growth.
How do you not fall for a guy who looks
like this guy in this photograph?
[ BA ]
P O E T S W H O S L E E P
