PJ HARVEY TONIGHT ~

 

NICOLAS GUILLEN ~

 

NOTICE

By resolution of the Local Authority

this great zoo was created

for natives and foreigners

and the pride of our nation.

Among the most prized specimens

are the water and wind animals

(as in the case of the hurricane),

also, a real live Aconcagua,

a teenage guitar,

living clouds,

one professor monkey, and another embryonic one.

Fatherland or Death?

     

                                               THE DIRECTOR

THE CARIBBEAN

In the aquarium of the Great Zoo

the Caribbean slips by.

                This animal,

enigmatic and maritime,

has a crest of crystal glass,

a blue back, a green tail,

an underbelly of compact corral,

and the gray fins of a hurricane.

On the aquarium, this inscription:

                                                         "Caution: it bites."

GUITAR

They went out hunting for guitars,

underneath the full moon.

And they brought back her:

pale, fine, lithe,

ceaseless mulata eyes,

a waist of open wood.

She's young, just barely flies.

But already she sings

when she hears, in other cages,

the flittering wings of sones and coplas.

His somber sones and her lonely coplas.

On her cage is this inscription: 

                                                    "Caution: she dreams."

THE RIVERS

Here is the serpent's cage.

Coiled up on themselves,

the rivers, the sacred rivers, sleep.

The Mississippi with its Blacks,

the Amazon with its Indians.

They are like the powerful springs

of gigantic trailer trucks.

Laughing, children toss them

little green living islands,

parrot-painted jungles,

manned canoes,

and other rivers.

The great rivers wake up,

uncoil themselves slowly,

gobble down everything, swell, almost bursting,

and then go back to sleep.

HURRICANE

A thoroughbred hurricane,

just arrived in Cuba from the Bahamas.

Raised in Bermuda

but has family in Barbados.

Has been to Puerto Rico.

Ripped out the mainmast of Jamaica by the roots.

Was going to ravage Guadeloupe.

Did ravage Martinique.

Age: two days.

_________________

Nicolas Guillen

The Great Zoo

translated by Aaron Coleman

The University of Chicago Press, 2024

photograph:

Langston Hughes, Michael Koltyov, Ernest Hemingway, Nicolas Guillen in Madrid, 1937

OSTAP SLYVYNSKY ~

 

Amber

Tell me, was it a joke? I have been digging

all night long, just like you told me to;

mice were laughing at me.

I seemed to see, on the other side,

the sun warming the leaves,

children being readied for school,

their white collars straightened,

people checking if the iron was left on,

watering petunias from a tin

watering can.

I could swear I heard

a heart beating through the clay. But was I

teasing this hope for nothing?

For nothing, I shuffled the earth, looking for even

a single bright thread in it?

Explain this to me, while I'm standing

staring at my own open palm.

There—right under my ring finger—

where the handle of a shovel rubbed my skin,

a grain of amber is now growing,

like a lamp, lit for a short while

in some purgatory of my own

with my very own hand.

__________________

Ostap Slyvynsky

Winter King

translated by Vitaly Chernetsky & Iryna Shuvalova

Lost Horse Press, 2023

KAFKA'S LAST TRIAL ~

 

R E A D   M E

    Norton 2018

UNSTOPPABLE DAVID AMRAM ~

 

D A V I D   A M R A M

     Erik Tanner

JACK KEROUAC & STEVE ALLEN ALL DAY ~

 

    March 1958

Review by Bruce Eder Poetry for the Beat Generation marked Jack Kerouac's debut as a recording artist. Strangely enough, it was the by-product of a disastrous first show by Kerouac in an engagement at the Village Vanguard during December of 1957. For the second performance, Kerouac's friend Steve Allen provided the accompaniment at the piano, with results so impressive that it would lead Kerouac to a short but dazzling career as a recording artist. The first result was this album, which came at the suggestion of either Allen or his friend, producer Bob Thiele, who was working for Dot Records at the time. The record was cut in a single session and a single take for each piece. Allen's graceful piano opens the recording and Kerouac comes in, reading "October in the Railroad Earth" for seven minutes, off of a roll of paper in front of him. Kerouac's reading are in a class by themselves, and separate from Allen ó the two performances co-exist and weave together without ever really joining, and the result is a peculiar form of jazz; Kerouac did his thing, Allen did his, and the result was a spellbinding performance, and it was musical, despite Kerouac's seeming monotone reading, which never slowed or otherwise interacted with Allen's piano ó his voice dances to its own beat, with Allen embellishing and working around him; in the process, you get visions of various facets of Kerouac's work and personality, in extended pieces such as "October in the Railroad Earth" and short, piercing brilliant exclamations such as "Deadbelly" and "Charlie Parker." The resulting album, cut in March of 1958, was one of the crowning achievements in recording of the 1950s. But it so appalled Randy Wood, the president of Dot Records, with its meandering narrative and daring language and subject matter, that the release was canceled, with Wood denouncing the recording in the trade papers as tasteless and questionable. Somewhere over 100 promotional copies of the Dot album (catalog number 3154) had gotten out to disc jockeys and reviewers, however, thus making it one of the rarest LPs in the label's entire history. Thiele finally left the company over the dispute and he reclaimed the master tape ó it was on the Hanover label, formed with Allen (who was virtually a pop-culture institution at the time), that Poetry for the Beat Generation finally reached the public in June of 1959. It's still worth a listen now every bit as much as it was in 1959, and perhaps even more so. [Reissued on Rhino's Jack Kerouac Collection, with one bonus track.] The ultimate Beat Generation collectible on vinyl might be Jack Kerouacís Poetry of the Beat Generation on Dot Records. Attempting to capitalize on the bestselling On the Road of the fall of 1957 as well as the West Coast craze for jazz poetry readings, Kerouac began a short, troubled career as a spoken word artist. In December 1957, Kerouac signed up for a multiple date engagement at the Village Vanguard. Kerouac lasted about a week. His first show was an out and out failure. Audiences failed to respond to Kerouac; Kerouac was nervous and unsure in his performance; and the musicians just did not mesh with Kerouac. In the second performance, Kerouac read with TV personality Steve Allen playing piano in the background. Kerouac found his voice and his sideman. The decision was made to cut an album. Kerouac and Allen worked with Allenís friend Bob Thiele who was a producer at Dot Records. Kerouac showed up at the recording studio with a bottle of rotgut wine and read with Steve Allen for about an hour. The recording engineer congratulated Kerouac on an excellent first take. Kerouac responded that it was the only take. According to the philosophy of spontaneous prose and first thought best thought, Kerouac sought to capture the spirit of his initial creation. Kerouac read both short and extended pieces. ìOctober in the Railroad Earthî is especially wonderful. The entire LP is fresh and alive showing Kerouac to be an accomplished performer of his work. As an example of jazz poetry readings, Poetry of the Beat Generation might be the finest example and it remains to this day one of the best spoken word albums of all time. It almost did not see the light of day. Randy Wood, Dot President, heard the record just before its release to the public. He was outraged by the frank language and subject matter. Today the record seems tame. Wood declared the record obscene and stated that he would not let his son listen to it. He ordered the record to be destroyed. Fortunately for collectors 130 copies (Dot 3154) were sent to reviewers before Woodís announcement. Copies have survived over the years but the LP is incredibly rare. I saw a copy on eBay years ago that sold for a couple thousand dollars. I have not seen a copy since.

LALITHA LAJMI ~

 

R E A D   M E

        Sternberg Press, 2025

AN AMERICAN AWAKENING ~

  

R E A D   M E

    "In 1965, the Dead's gear weighed 800 pounds and fitted in

(Bill) Kreutzmann's station wagon; by 1973, it weighed

30,000 pounds and required a 40-foot tractor-trailer to

haul it from place to place."

—p. 302,  HERE BESIDE THE RISING TIDE

ALEX DIMITROV ~

 

Highway

I went to Switzerland that winter.

The lake was full of birds.

The women carried flowers.

And God forgot the world.

I know, I know

that even the highest branches

(even the highest branches will be touched).

And men are maps of evening.

And weather's all we have.

And only the sky

whenever I'm with you

(whenever I'm with you)

is a highway I've been on before

is a night lost in June.

____________________________

Alex Dimitrov

Ecstasy

Knopf 2025

STEVIE RAY VAUGHAN TONIGHT ~

 

MOBY GRAPE MORNING ~

 

MOBY GRAPE ALL NIGHT ~

 

JAZRA KHALEED ~

 

Class Hatred Is Growing

 

Each day from morning till night

from night till morning

class hatred throughout the world is growing.

It's growing a hundred megajoules per second

ten spans per hectare, growing growing.

We never felt the earth so close to us, fallow and deserted

never was our throat parched by so much violence

never our days had so few feet to run with

never, never

it is carnivorous the nature of our class, voracious

its blows are calculated and its pain mortal

as it goes on burying its dead by memory.

Each day class hatred is growing

it piles in the produce market

it piles in construction sites

its piles in strawberry fields

it piles in telephone centers

it piles in office corridors

and in assembly lines

it piles up on my fingertips.

There's never been so much class hatred

in the breasts of proletarians

in their heartbeat and commotion

in their spelling and their syntax.

They wake up, brush their teeth

are dressed, go to work

and class hatred is always growing

filling with bones their words

filling with logic their insanity

filling with gravel their shoes

it's burning their lungs

it overflows out of their pockets

they don't know where to put it anymore.

Class hatred is growing

in both the short and median air waves

in analog and digital signals

in electric circuits.

When it passes through a resistor

the temperature isincreased

the electric loads are increased

the density of the suppression force is increased

on the condition that the system

is not subject to any reverse alteration.

Class hatred is always analogous

to the square of the devaluation of labor

and analogous to the intensity of exploitation.

Class hatred is a mathematical ratio

connecting the law of lavue

with the second law of thermodynamics

and my own skeletomuscular disorders.

Class hatred is an investment risk

class hatred doesn't yield a guaranteed dividend

it's capital's exposure to the denial of labor

it's a sure way to lose your money.

Class hatred is a case of lesser violence

a danger relative to industrial disasters

with malfunctions, sabotage and wild strikes.

Don't expose yourselves to class hatred

if you don't grasp the nature and the extent of risk

the economic damages you'll very likely incur.

Class hatred is growing in all continents

it's growing in all its rags and all its weapons

its growing in all languages and all dialects.

As it grows the stones blossom in the hands

the heart beats on the anvil

the horses gallop in the breast

and inside me,

World Poetry, 2025 ah comrades, inside me

it overflows the rivers pouring in my body.

translated by Angelos Sakkis

_________________________________

Jazra Khaleed

The Light That Burns Us

World Poetry, 2025

THE LOW ANTHEM TONIGHT ~

 

ONCE UPON A TIME CINEMA ~

 

R E A D   M E

     NYRB,  2023

VAN GOGH AND THE END OF NATURE ~

 

R E A D   M E

     Yale University

     2024

WOLVES & MEN ~

 

W O L V E S

       photo ~ Kyle Artelle

LESTER YOUNG ALL DAY ALL NIGHT ~

 

THE USE OF PHOTOGRAPHY ~

 

R E A D   M E

      Seven Stories Press

      2024

A FEARLESS EYE : BARBARA RAMOS ~

 

B A R B A R A    R A M O S

       “Man Sleeping at Altamont.”Credit...Barbara Ramos