Received today:
Drawn to Marvel: Poems from the Comic Books, edited by Bryan D. Dietrich and Marta Ferguson (Minor Arcana Press)
I haven't been posting much as I'm trying to find a workaround the Literary Press list problem. I think I figured out a way, so poems, reviews, and updated will continue after I work through this workaround. Thanks for your patience.
Went to a memorial service today, and thought of this quote (which I sometimes include in wedding services):
“The soft bonds of love are indifferent to life and death. They hold
through time so that yesterday’s love is part of today’s and the
confidence in tomorrow’s love is also part of today’s. And when one
dies, the memory lives in the other, and is warm and breathing. And when
both die — I almost believe, rationalist though I am — that somewhere
it remains, indestructible and eternal, enriching all of the universe by
the mere fact that once it existed,” — Isaac Asimov, It’s Been a Good Life.
Saturday, April 12, 2014
Wednesday, April 9, 2014
Just got this poster in: http://pabook.libraries.psu.edu/activities/ppp/posters/2014/di%20piero.html
Text only below:
JOHNNY ONE NOTE
(Bobby Hutcherson in Oakland)
The mallet strikes but something’s off,
and so he hits again, curling that lower lip,
purses his brow, as if this sign, this minor woe,
were speech the vibes might understand,
so when he lifts bluish lids as if wakened
to the desired tone that rings now, it seems,
it sounds, under wraps, a water-ly quaver,
through the club crowd’s silence,
as it floats above us like an aerosol
trying to find a new way to escape,
passes through the wall’s mortared pores
to reverb in the cool night air of an un-
peopled sidewalk, droning toward the tracks
where a passing peopled train sucks up
and winds his finally found, wowed tone
around its wheels, held there by steel heat
one hundred miles, until it reaches the sea,
where wheels and whistle overreach
surging surf the good vibration feels
such desire for, and leaves its tedium
of the round and round, lofting to a sea
that comes and goes but finally simply goes,
as one night, this night, the cool vibes’ air
(struck finally in the changed groove of sax
and ecstatic kit) is free, finally free,
to go where we won’t hear from it again.
From “Nitro Nights” by W. S. Di Piero.
Used by permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Copper Canyon Press.
Copyright © 2011 by W. S. Di Piero.
Text only below:
JOHNNY ONE NOTE
(Bobby Hutcherson in Oakland)
The mallet strikes but something’s off,
and so he hits again, curling that lower lip,
purses his brow, as if this sign, this minor woe,
were speech the vibes might understand,
so when he lifts bluish lids as if wakened
to the desired tone that rings now, it seems,
it sounds, under wraps, a water-ly quaver,
through the club crowd’s silence,
as it floats above us like an aerosol
trying to find a new way to escape,
passes through the wall’s mortared pores
to reverb in the cool night air of an un-
peopled sidewalk, droning toward the tracks
where a passing peopled train sucks up
and winds his finally found, wowed tone
around its wheels, held there by steel heat
one hundred miles, until it reaches the sea,
where wheels and whistle overreach
surging surf the good vibration feels
such desire for, and leaves its tedium
of the round and round, lofting to a sea
that comes and goes but finally simply goes,
as one night, this night, the cool vibes’ air
(struck finally in the changed groove of sax
and ecstatic kit) is free, finally free,
to go where we won’t hear from it again.
From “Nitro Nights” by W. S. Di Piero.
Used by permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Copper Canyon Press.
Copyright © 2011 by W. S. Di Piero.
Tuesday, April 8, 2014
Monday, April 7, 2014
Washing his wife’s clothes
They say to lose yourself in everyday things,
to keep the grief at bay in the ordinary, in the same.
They don’t know shit.
The infusion of each other into each other wasn’t forced. Shit happened.
And now the final rinse
Sunday, April 6, 2014
DEEPENING
LOW OVER THE BALTIC STATES
Here the
road zigzags out to Sysne Point.
The horizon
feeds out a sea,
constantly
new lines that turn
and turn
over the same used-up truths.
The sky is
lumpish grey and so low
we have to
stoop. A stroke of memory
could have
lingered over the cliffs
and
brushwood for a moment
sparkled
like blueweed.
There is no
memory.
Behind the
window of the bosun´s cottage
looms an
age-bent Nietzsche
cursing the
oozing wick of the lamp:
it´s
hindering his final work,
”Tragedy is
Dead.” The rickety ladder
the old
women of the village used
when
scrubbing the sky clean in spring
is now
chopped-up firewood by the doorstep.
The
courtyard tree is hunched
like the
school-book´s Model T Ford
as it nears
the speed of light.
No heart is
great or witless.
Even the
grass keeps its head down.
It´s only
between the newly written waves
we can read,
with a bit of effort,
how history
keeps on insisting.
Kjell Espmark, translated by Robin Fulton
Saturday, April 5, 2014
Books received:
The Poems of Lesbia Harford (Sirius Books)
John Thomas Allen, Lumière (NightBallet Press)
Antonio Cisneros, Crónica del Niño Jesus de Chilca (Libros del Bicho)
Pennsylvania is one of the few states without a Poet Laureate. Time to rectify that.
The Poems of Lesbia Harford (Sirius Books)
John Thomas Allen, Lumière (NightBallet Press)
Antonio Cisneros, Crónica del Niño Jesus de Chilca (Libros del Bicho)
Pennsylvania is one of the few states without a Poet Laureate. Time to rectify that.
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