ARHOOLIE RECORDS / DOWN HOME MUSIC ~

 

R E A D  &  L I S T E N

YU XUANJI ~

 

Notes of Late Spring

Living in a dark alley behind shambled gates,

I have few companions or friends —

my perfect lover boy only stays on in my dreams.

So whose banquet with fine silks

floats out this fragrant incense,

and what pavilion releases such singing to the wind?

Living just beside the street, the noise of martial drums

shocked me out of my morning sleep.

The screech of magpies in my unused yard

churns up the youthful restlessness I feel.

How can I keep chasing such worldly things

when I know this body

is the same as an untied boat?

______________________

Yu Xuanji

Yin Mountain

The immortal poetry of three Daoist women

translated by Peter Levitt & Rebecca Nie

Shambhala, 2022

HE, LEO (LEW WELCH) ~

 

R E A D    M E

Oregon State University Press

2023

TADEUSZ ROZEWICZ~

A Normal Poet

sometimes I get anxious over the fact

that I am so ordinary

sometime somewhere I've written about it

I'm not worried but I am starting

to think that perhaps it is not

normal when a "poet" is not

a "phenomenon"

it's high time I craft my image as

someone wild, poetic, colorful

part schizophrenic part lover

but the pronlem is I love missionary style

I like taking walks

I am the husband of one wife

in accord with the dictates of the Apostle Paul

I get up at six in the morning

go to the bathroom

and so forth

I don't have a beard

or even a goatee

or curls

falling to my shoulders

for a moment I think about death

revise a poem

then dive into

life

in the evening I tear off

another page from the calendar

September 24, 2007

267th day of the year

sunrise 6:24 a.m.

sunset 6:31 p.m.

on the back of the page

is a recipe for cutlets

fry cutlets in

hot skillet (. . .)

brown on both sides

breading it first (. . .)

before falling asleep I read

a variety of art culture literary

monthlies bimonthlies

and quarterlies

and see (to my surprise)

that the poems of my fellow

poets male and female

slowly come to resemble

my poems

and my old poems

resemble

their new poems

_______________________________

TADEUSZ ROZEWICZ

Sobbing Superpower

translated by Joanna Trzeciak

Norton, 2011

MINA LOY ~

 

M I N A    L O Y

Dalkey Archive,  2011

OLD CROW MEDICINE SHOW PLAYS : BLONDE ON BLONDE ~

 

James Taylor and Monte Hellman Discuss Two-Lane Blacktop ~

 

Raúl Gómez Jattin ~

 

Urban Poet

That poet from Bogotá 

As a boy he never knew

the scent of wet earth

or the revealing touch of animals

or saw the river wash life away . . .

To make up for so many losses

he sets a bird free in every poem

Clouds come and clouds go

At each sunrise the sea

swells tides toward his forgetfulness

That poet

grows quiet when I write to him

about how man's most pressing tragedy

is his war against nature

He writes long poems

to a papier-mâché lover

You're no match for the flowers

Yours are tinplate stars

Your scenographic sea

doesn't reveal or give rise to memories

Poet

You must go to nature

To gaze upon it

To defend it

_______________

Raúl Gómez Jattin

Almost Obscene

translated by Katherine M. Hedeen

& Olivia Lott

CSU,  2022

GARY PANTER'S PICTURE BOX ~

 

An intimate look at the work and life of a legendary artist. Gary Panter has been one of the most influential figures in visual culture since the mid-1970s. From his era-defining punk graphics to his cartoon icon Jimbo to his visionary design for Pee-wee's Playhouse, he has left his mark on every medium he's touched. Working in close collaboration with the artist, PictureBox has assembled the definitive volume on Panter's work from the early 1970s to the present. This monumental, slipcased set is split into two 350-page volumes. The first is a comprehensive monograph featuring over 700 images of paintings, drawings, sculptures, posters and comics, alongside essays by Robert Storr, Mike Kelley, Richard Klein, Richard Gehr, Karrie Jacobs and Byron Coley, as well a substantial commentary by the artist himself. The second volume features a selection from Panter's sketchbooks--the site of some of his most audacious work--most of which has never been published in any form.
A three-time Emmy Award-winner for his production design on Pee-wee's Playhouse and the recipient of the 2000 Chrysler Award for Design Excellence, graphic artist Gary Panter has drawn inspiration from diverse vernacular and traditional art arenas over the course of the past four decades. Closely associated with the underground comics and music scenes on both coasts, he is responsible for designing the Screamers iconic 1970s poster, many record covers for Frank Zappa, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and The Residents and the ongoing comic character Jimbo. Most recently Panter has performed psychedelic light shows at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C. and at New York's Anthology Film Archives. He was a featured artist in the major 2006-2007 touring exhibition, Masters of American Comics.

PictureBox, 2008

ANN LAUTERBACH~

 

Door

I don't know who lives in those houses

with pastel doors, mint green

and pale salmon.  Whoever heard of a lavender

door in the middle of winter, as if

snow could dilute

alizarin crimson, saturated lapis,

deepest cobalt blue.  Perhaps

they imagine a kinder welcome.

Girls not able to reach the knobs,

their pink shoes and tired crayons;

boys with missing teeth; the dog barking.

Or an elder in slippers and gown

recalling the pale sprigs of April, the scent of lilac.

______________

Ann Lauterbach

Door

Penguin, 2023

THE CHILD AND THE RIVER ~

 

R E A D   M E

NYRB, 2023

EMILY DICKINSON FACE to FACE ~

 

R E A D    M E

McNally 2023

SAM RIVERS ~

 

Beatrice · Sam Rivers · Jaki Byard · Ron Carter · Tony Williams Fuchsia Swing Song ℗ 2015 Rivbea Music Released on: 2015-05-22 Mixer: Rudy Van Gelder Producer: Alfred Lion Composer: Sam Rivers Music Publisher: Rivbea Music (BMI)

AFFINITIES ~

 

R E A D    M E

New York Review of Books

2023

BEN LERNER ~

 

No Art

Tonight I can't remember why

everything is permitted or,

what amounts to the same thing,

forbidden. No art is total, even

theirs, even though it raises

towers or kills from the air,

there's too much piety in despair

as if the silver leaves behind

the glass were politics

and the wind they move in

and the chance of scattered

storms. Those are still

my ways of making and

I know that I can call on you

until you're real enough

to turn from. Maybe I have fallen

behind, am falling, but

I think of myself as having

people, a small people

in a failed state, and love

more avant-garde than shame

or the easy distances.

All my people are with me now

the way the light is.

_____________________

Ben Lerner

The Lights

Farrar Straus Giroux 2023

DAZAI : SELF PORTRAITS ~

 

R E A D     M E

Kodansha International

1991

MILAN KUNDERA ~

   

Who is a vandal? It is absolutely not the illiterate peasant who in a fit of fury sets fire to the rich landowner's mansion. The vandals I myself run into are all of them educated, pleased with themselves, socially well situated, and not especially resentful toward anyone. The vandal, rather, is that prideful narrow mind, pleased with itself and ever ready to claim its rights. That proud narrow-minded fellow believes that the power to fit the world to his own image is among his inalienable rights and, since the world is largely made up of matters beyond his capacities, he adapts the world to his image by destroying it. Thus, an adolescent knocks the head off some statue in a park because the statue infuriatingly seems a better human than he; and since any act of self-affirmation brings man satisfaction, he does it with delight. Men who live only their only contextless present, who know nothing of the historical continuity around it and who lack culture, can transform their nation into a desert with no history, no memory, no echoes, and untouched by beauty.

____________________

MILAN KUNDERA

"Address to the Czech Writers' Congress:

The Literature of Small Nations"

( 1967 )

translated from the French by Linda Asher

from:

Milan Kundera 

A Kidnapped West

The Tragedy of Central Europe

Harper, 2023

SIT BACK ~

 

THE  ENTIRE  CRITERION  FILM  COLLECTION  SUPERCUT

ALL YOU FONIES (WOODY GUTHRIE) NEVER GIT DRUNK NO MORE ~

 

Dropkick Murphys / Nikki Lane

lyrics:

Woody Guthrie

OPIKA PENDE AFRICA AT 78 RPM ~

 

"Opika Pende: Africa at 78rpm" is a 4-CD collection featuring 100 tracks taken from rare 78rpm recordings of African music (1909 to mid-1960s), none of which have ever been issued on CD until now.

Dust-to-Digital

2011