Saturday, February 13, 2021
JOHN HAINES (1958-1960) ~
Two Poems After Li Po
I — Conversation
If you ask me why
I live here on
this lonely hillside
I will smile and say:
The autumn leaves
drift on the moving
water, and
the world of men
is far away.
II — Quiet Night
Moonlight spills
across the bed,
outside the frost
is deepening.
I lie awake and
watch the changing
shadows, thinking
of the lonely earth.
A Letter
after Li Chang-yin
I will not ask you
what we know too well,
the heart has
its own intelligence.
I lower the flame in the lamp
by the snowbound window
and let the moonlight in.
Two thousand miles away
you have said goodbye,
and there is no returning.
After Chu Yuan
With you
I will go down
to the river
and bathe in a quiet pool.
I will dry your hair
in the sun
singing a little,
facing the quiet wind.
With you
I will climb the slope
of evening,
warmed and content,
thinking of home.
________________
John Haines
Of Your Passage, O Summer
Limberlost Press, 2004
Friday, February 12, 2021
LIVINGSTON SUITE ~
from Livingston Suite
Maybe I'm wrong. After years of practice
I learned to see as a bird but I refuse
to do it now, not wanting to find the body.
I traveled east to our cabin in Michigan
where I learned that my Zen master, Kobun
Chino Sensei, drowned in a cold lake trying to save
his three-year-old daughter who also drowned.
I make nothing of this but my mind suddenly
rises far upward and I see Kobun in his black
robes struggling in the water and he becomes
a drowning raven who then frees himself for flight,
his daughter on the lake's bottom rising to join him.
What could the vision mean but a gift? I said
maybe I'm wrong. The Resurrection is fatally correct.
__________________
Jim Harrison
Livingston Suite
Limberlost Press, 2005
Thursday, February 11, 2021
Wednesday, February 10, 2021
Tuesday, February 9, 2021
Monday, February 8, 2021
Sunday, February 7, 2021
ELDER CHARLES BECK ~
Elder Charles Beck from Mobile, Alabama was a popular gospel singer, evangelist and multi-instrumentalist. He started his career in the 1920s working as pianist with Rev. D.C. Rice and started his solo career in 1937 with an early recording of Thomas Dorsey's great composition "Precious Lord"
Friday, February 5, 2021
JANINE POMMY VEGA ~
Today is
Janine Pommy Vega's
Birthday
( 1942- 2010 )
and this
Spring
we will celebrate
Janine
with a
new book of
vintage
poems —
watch this
post
for
details ~
Happy
Birthday !
Janine
__________
drawing by bob arnold
Thursday, February 4, 2021
Wednesday, February 3, 2021
RE-READING ELSE LASKER-SCHULER ~
My edition of Concert (Konzert in German)
has for its front cover, naturally, one of Franz Marc's
wondrous postcard paintings which the artist sent to
Lasker-Schuler almost monthly over the years 1912-14.
Marc would perish in WW I at Verdun as a soldier in 1916,
one year after another of the author's associates,
the poet Georg Trakl, took his life after the horrendous
battle of Grodek. Misery traveled with Else Lasker-Schuler
whether the death of her beloved mother and brother Paul, and even her
only child, also Paul, from an ill-fated marriage, and still in
Concert we receive a dulcet style of stories, essays, dream-state
vignettes. It was one of the last books published by a Jew before
the rise of the Third Reich. Lasker-Schuler was out of Germany before
Hitler clearly showed his face, and wandering, wandering, eventually settling
elderly and unevenly in Palestine, struggling with the language and never
quite coming to terms with where she was and the Palestine of her dreams.
She would die of heart failure in 1945 after publishing her last book of
poems, My Blue Piano (Mein Blaues Klavier). In 1952
Gottfried Benn declared Lasker-Schuler "the greatest
poetess Germany ever had."
Poetry sails through her prose.
[ BA ]
Tuesday, February 2, 2021
Monday, February 1, 2021
Sunday, January 31, 2021
RE-READING LYLE GLAZIER ~
" You be Harry Glazier's boy, bean't ye?"
Sugaring Off
Easter vacation
he tramps the Gutter Road
from Gramp's to Uncle Maurice's
where the whole family's sugaring
Lynn and Orman and Calvin
trip metal caps off buckets
under spiles
draining the sugar bush
Merle bossing the gathering,
tub slewing, team
straining, bobsled runners
grating on a ledge
Perry shoves another slab
in the firebox
"a gallon to the barrel, boys,
get a move on!"
Maurice tips the dipper, testing
In the kitchen Aunt Pluma
boils down a batch for
fancy sugar cakes:
stars, hearts, scaled fish
Loyce and Thelma spoon snow
from a dishpan into ie pie plates
the thick glaze pulls at the fork
"a little goes a long ways"
_________________________
Lyle Glazier
Prefatory Lyrics
Coffee House Press, 1991
___________________________________
It was the poet and editor Cid Corman
who had the great ear and tenacity to
promote, publish and persevere
so many fine back country poets —
be it Gary Snyder's early book of poems
Riprap, or Lorine Niedecker's entire workbook,
Theodore Enslin's musical memory, and gone into
the bushes forgotten Lyle Glazier's tramps in the sugar bush,
and this is a mere touching of the Corman radiance.
So few could restore that moment of lyrical movement
and visual care as Lyle Glazier works his tablet in
Prefatory Lyrics.
[ BA ]
Saturday, January 30, 2021
STAN BRAKHAGE ~
Another one from my little books bookcase —
ideal and still easy enough to find a copy,
a few bucks used, and neat leathery
feel cloth, brought forth from
Harvey Brown's Frontier Press —
you can almost smell the past!
Stan Brakhage writing as if an
open letter his loves and lumber
about making film.
Reads closely, Brakhage
always gives more than he's asked.
[ BA ]
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