daydreaming w/ Bob Arnold
New from Longhouse, Spring 2021 ~
Merrill Gilfillan
TUNES MEANT FOR WHISTLING
Three color booklet of new poems
by Merrill in fold-out splendor.
Both signed and unsigned editions.
Signed limited edition $20
Unsigned $12.95
(International orders please inquire)
order through Paypal with free shipping (use our email address of poetry@sover.net)
or a check to
Longhouse, PO Box 2454, West Brattleboro, VT 05303
Longhouse
Publishers & Booksellers
Green River, Vermont
2021
black and white, 56 min, 1978, digitally remastered 2014
From early Colonial times, the rural hilltowns of New England have been home to generations of dairy farmers. They earned their living through a remarkably varied combination of seasonal activities and incessant daily chores — maple sugaring, plowing, planting, cultivating, haying, logging, clearing fields, building stone walls, mending fences, harvesting crops, cutting, splitting and stacking firewood, breeding, doctoring, trading and slaughtering their cattle, pigs, sheep, chickens and horses; while also daily milking & feeding their herds, mucking stalls, cooking, cleaning, tending home fires and raising their families.
All the while they supported each other in tightly knit communities sustained by shared values, mutual needs, and respect for the land.
When Jefferson envisioned the citizenry essential for the success of America's experiment in democracy, these were very possibly the type of agrarian people he well knew and had in mind: self-reliant, hard-working, good-humored, neighborly, and blessed with common sense.
Root Hog or Die is a portrait of a living remnant of this once pervasive but rapidly vanishing way of life. Filmed in 1973 in hilltowns across Western Massachusetts and Southern Vermont, it follows the cycle of the farming year from spring to winter. In its course we visit with an array of elders, who reflect on farming's deep natural patterns, share their family histories and personal memories, and ponder the inevitable forces of technological and social change they have endured. The bittersweet nature of their challenges is manifest, as is the quiet pride they take in their lives as farmers.
“A significant contribution to American oral history.” — Alan Lomax
“A must for every American Studies program.” — Robert Gardner
P O E T S W H O S L E E P
There Is No Exile Where The Heart Is Pure
( for Pablo Casals )
Behind the barn, the first week of March, on a bright
morning after long rain,
the windy cedar tree
turns round and round in the sunlight.
A winter horse
rubs himself on the corner of the barn.
Little pieces of cedar glide down where the ants are
calling home their old senators who
have failed utterly.
Coming home, carrying suitcases full of noise,
they pass through small American towns.
On the barn wall,
rusted nails bleed; and in fences, in hinges, in boards.
The horse (I think of Casals in exile!) plays
a suite unaccompanied in the silver cedar boards.
Inside,
the stranded hay-wagon shudders.
Between its floorboards
seeds
trickle to the earth.
A dry dusty odor mingles with festering dampness,
and a hand —
blue ridges and rivers coming and going through it —
rests on the white sheet of the windows.
My grandmother
comes to swing open wide the huge
double doors,
doors like drifting continents,
and a wedge of healing sunlight
slips into the barn before her.
_____________________________
Robert Sund
The Hides of White Horses Shedding Rain
Copper Canyon Press, 1981
there never were enough Robert Sund poems —
it's strange, each time I type out Robert Sund's
name it shows up as Robert Sung — as if he is
returning (as I type) or has indeed returned —
to the Sung Dynasty, where of course he belongs.
This book, signed by Sund, I have no idea where
it came from — maybe a good friend, a lucky find?
here in New England — far from the Sund home of
Washington State — where as I boy in the late 60s I
had already found his masterpiece Bunch Grass
and crowded the book into my work lunchpail as
a great companion with me at midday. "Whatcha
got there, Bob, the book. . .what's bunch grass?"
I'm finding out. . .
[ BA ]
P O E T S W H O S L E E P
