Issa's Untidy Hut

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Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Carolyne Rohrig & Dan Wyke: Wednesday Haiku, #50

Photo by jeltovski

folding the river
inside the map
another wrong turn

Carolyne Rohrig

Photo by Carolyne Rohrig

heron by the lake
stillness
looking at stillness

Dan Wyke

Hasu ni shirasagi by Baison

noisy reed thrush--
the big river flows
in silence

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,

Don

Send a single haiku for the Wednesday Haiku feature. Here's how.

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 127 songs

Sunday, December 25, 2011

Quartet for Christmas: Beautiful, Familiar, Unusual, Classic

Why this song you might ask, with total legitimacy? Well, there are many reasons, probably both starting and ending with the fact that this old hippie fart believes this to be the finest song to come out of a unique era of music. And because I gave myself the album on which it appears for Christmas in my very early, impressionable teen years, hence the association.

"River," by Joni Mitchell, has to be one of the most unusual songs to somehow, slowly, slowly, wend its way into the classic Christmas canon. Again, a song that goes straight to heart.

Finally, no explanations necessary here. It's a toss up - who would you rather have come down the chimney, Santa or Eartha? Eartha or Santa? Something in a name, something in a rhyme. Truly, there is only one Santa and, as far as I know, one Eartha.

Eartha. Just think about that name.

Eartha.

Beautiful.

Best of holidays to all. I'm very fond of the winter solstice - a dangerous time, true, for all species, hence all those lights from the upright brigade. Bank up the fire, brothers and sisters. Someone's told me that, from here on out, it will get lighter every day.

Now that's my definition of hope.

bedtime sake--
whether the new year comes
or not

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,

Don

Send a single haiku for the Wednesday Haiku feature. Here's how.

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 127 songs

Saturday, December 24, 2011

Sketching a New Speedometer: Leithauser on Sondheim on Craft

Last weekend's New York Times Book Review had a piece done by the poet/novelist Brad Leithauser on the second volume of Stephen Sondheim's collected lyrics, Look, I Made a Hat: Collected Lyrics (1981-2011). Anyone who has followed this blog knows popular music is a penchant of mine - the long running feature, Issa's Sunday Service, currently on hiatus, attests to that.

The relation between lyric and poem is less relation than symbiosis so, though not particularly interested in Sondheim's lyrics more than casual fan, which I certainly am, I gave the review a go and stumbled on a little bit of wonder. Here is Leithuaser, after discussing Sondheim's decided preference for exact rhyme as opposed to off or half rhyme, setting up a pointed quote, followed by some fine commentary, and the other shoe:

Here he (Sondheim) is discussing a rhyme from "Follies":

"I had a similar moment when I paired 'soul-stirring' and 'bolstering.' The rhyme is not perfect of course - the equal accents on 'soul' and 'stir' don't quite match the heavy accent on 'bol' and the lighter one on 'ster,' but I tried to mask that by leaping the melody up on each '-ing' to distract the ear."

In fact, I can't imagine how serious craftsmen in any field wouldn't find both books (of Sondheim's collected lyrics) inspiring. The quilt maker fussing over which shade of red to employ as a highlight; the cook experimenting on how most appetizingly to glaze a plate of scallops; the automobile designer sketching a streamlined new speedometer - all such people should experience a sense of kinship when reading Sondheim debating whether, when seeking a rhyme, he might fairly use "wood" rather than "woods":

"What justification was there to use 'wood' here (and in the 'Finale') and 'woods' everywhere else? I finally hit on an explanation: 'wood' sounded statelier and therefore suited a lyric sung by someone outside the action."

A wonderful bit of insight for poet, songwriter, and those attentive to detail in any circumstance. Leithauser is to be praised; to focus on this 'small' bit of detail in a 450 plus page book encapsulates the importance of the whole book, exactly what is needed in the short art form known as the book review.

Photograph by Jack Delano

the farting contest
begins at once...
winter quilt

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,

Don

Send a single haiku for the Wednesday Haiku feature. Here's how.

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 127 songs

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Roberta Beary & Vassilis Zambaras: Wednesday Haiku, #49

Utagawa Hiroshige

moon viewing
mother's small hand lifts
in farewell

Roberta Beary

W. J. Neatby

Nightingales near
the river.

No superfluous noise.

Vassilis Zambaras

Eishōsai Chōki

When I see the ocean,
Whenever I see it,
Oh, my mother!

Issa
translated by R. H. Blyth

Ōshukubai

cherry blossoms scatter--
a nightingale sings
I cry

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,

Don

Send a single haiku for the Wednesday Haiku feature. Here's how.

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 127 songs

Sunday, December 18, 2011

A Sunday Interlude

Lesser Ury: London in the Fog (London im Nebel 1926)

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions
And for a hundred visions and revisions
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

T. S. Eliot
from "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

white versus yellow--
the butterflies
wrestle too

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

Photo by Chester B. Long

best,

Don

Send a single haiku for the Wednesday Haiku feature. Here's how.

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 127 songs

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Pat Nelson: Two Haiku - Wednesday Haiku, #48

Edward Hopper: Night on the El Train, 1918

dusk :: his story the length of a cigarette

Photo by Snapperjack

the fog lover walks toward the river sound . . .

2 haiku by Pat Nelson

Antique Japanese cigarette case

cloud and fog--
into my sleeves
they go

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,

Don

Send a single haiku for the Wednesday Haiku feature. Here's how.

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 127 songs

Saturday, December 10, 2011

Theodore Enslin, I.M.: Baker, Giannini & Philips

Photo courtesy of Ed Baker

This post contains some poems and photographs in tribute to Theodore Enslin, by fellow poets and friends Ed Baker, David Giannini, and John Phillips, as well as a poem by the poet himself. In addition, there is also a link to a brief obituary (and an excerpt from same) and a recording of Brahms Intermezzo, Opus 18, No. 2, which Theodore Enslin requested be played in lieu of a memorial service or other type of observance.

“let me tell you a
"story
"about that chair you’re sitting in
"I call it The Low Down Chair

“it was many years ago now.
“She was a Catholic girl.
“Very pretty.”

& then he took a snap of me w my
little Kodak Instan-matic.

“In THAT LOW DOWN CHAIR
“SHE
“& It was many years ago

“& lots of poems-into-books came
“afterwards.”

“and the cane?”

“It’s one that I made.
“I make them. Sell them.

“That’s how I got to be so rich.
“Selling canes. Selling poems.”

a short time later
we walked his property to that Old Pine

“There’s a story in that Old Pine
“You sure take a lot of pictures.

"I’m hungry. You hungry?

“I know a place in town. Great Haddock Chowder
“Ever eat a Bloomin' Onion? Big as a basketball.”

At the diner he flirted w the cute waitress
who
knew his ways & means

made Love with spoon in chowder

Ed Baker

Here are three poems by David Giannini:

THREE POEMS to TED (THROUGH the YEARS)

1 1. AUDUBON SANCTUARY, WELLFLEET

Beyond sanctuary the sea

“so quick to feel surprise and shame”

of waves at crest that suspense

suspension where the soul feels

the soul feels its mirrors mirrors

of salt of our bodies of our blood

of instants of the moon of the tides

spreading us to grains and with

“The earth under our feet we are

not asked to begin nowhere”—

we stand on belief and sand

then step this way to the marsh.

2. MAYBE SONG

Maybe if you tell it the wind will stop maybe

the long wind if you tell will stop banging its

bells. Maybe the wind will stop if you slip

into the wind silence that wants in maybe

bell longing will come. Maybe your silence

lives inside the will of the wind maybe in

long bells hiding from ruthless interims

of eye. Maybe if you spy them the bells will

stop maybe the long bells if you spy them

will stop if you will. Maybe if you slip into

the silence the wind that wants in will spy

a forest being maybe many still trees. Maybe

if you feel it being tall pine air maybe the

being will be silent ruthless interims of ear.

To age

and move uneasily

to become

adventuresome

in mind (assuming

the necessary

foolishness,

the course

and curse of it)

despite macular de-

generation and

the falling

to ground, then

abed,

and the final jit-

tery track of

being

what you always were,

Ted.

David Giannini

A poem and a photograph of Theodore Enslin by John Phillips:

Photo courtesy of John Phillips

LETTER

for Ted Enslin

The daffodils are

just

coming into

bloom

Still

a number of

croci

& a kind of blue

scilla

I found

years ago

in an

abandoned garden

a swallow just

fluttered in

23.4.05

John Phillips

Here is an excerpt from an obituary in the Daily Bulldog, in Farmington, Maine:

Anyone who knew Ted will be familiar with his desire to have the last word -- so here it is:
"In lieu of a memorial service or other observances, I would prefer that concerned friends in thinking of me might listen to or perform, the Brahms Intermezzo, Opus 118 #2, whenever it might occur to them as appropriate. To me, that one short piece sums up what I might have hoped to achieve in a life in art."

The Way Desideratum

Goodbye, but not
goodbye again.
I do not leave you--
land behind me
in the land ahead.
I step the curve,
and curve enough
returns.

Theodore Enslin

Photo courtesy of Ed Baker

---------------------------------

from the thin curve
of the sickle moon...
one leaf falls

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,

Don

Send a single haiku for the Wednesday Haiku feature. Here's how.

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 127 songs