Diane di Prima: Compassion

Photo by Bob Wilson

Bob Arnold of Longhouse has passed along the information that Diane di Prima is in dire need of help with medical bills.  Here is information from Michael McClure:

Diane is suffering with several painful and even life-threatening illnesses, including removal of all teeth, arthritis from her earlier back operation, extreme problems with glaucoma and a needed operation; but that’s just the top of the list. Despite all, she is in unexpectedly fine spirits. If you know of any way to help her, she would appreciate it and I would also.

This post from The Poetry Foundation gives more information.   A webpage has been set up on Giving Forward to make donations for Diane.  I've dug deep to help out; Diane has been so incredibly generous with her work in tiny Lilliput Review.  We all know how badly the healthcare system is broken and how well the profession of poetry pays.  As of this writing, in a short amount of time, over $15,000 has been raised of the projected goal of $20,000.  Even as a few bucks is a big help.

If you can help, please do.  Thanks for taking the time.

got in & now it's not so easy
to get out, huh, Bee?
Same for you as for me.

     Diane di Prima
     (from Seminary Poems)

best,
Don

for the poor
there's not a spring
without blossoms!

   Issa  
   translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

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Bob Arnold: Forever

Cover of Bob Arnold's Forever

 

Two little beauties from Bob Arnold's new tiny little booklet, Forever.  The handmade paper cover, delightful photos, illustrations and fine poems comprise a production any small press maven might envy (and collector might covet). I don't see it mounted up on the Longhouse website  (oh, here it is)yet, so if you are interested, drop Bob a line at <poetry at sover dot net>, substituting @ for at, and . for dot.

The First Step To Independence

Breaking worse
what you try
to fix

Tobacco Road

what a corny
film

and how
I can't

forget the
old fella's

sadness

                                                       Bob Arnold









my eternal youth ornament--
just three cents
of emperor's pine

     Issa
     translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

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Bob Arnold's Yokel: The Continuum Is Clear

John Martone is one of my favorite contemporary poets of the short form, so when he offered a review of Bob Arnold's new book, Yokel - A Long Green Mountain Poem, I was happy to accept.   It is with great pleasure that I turn the critical reins over to John, particularly since I've published and always enjoy reading Arnold's work.  John's opinions, of course, are his own. 

And let me hasten to add they are opinions I respect mightily.


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


Bob Arnold: Yokel – A Long Green Mountain Poem. Guilford, VT: Longhouse, 2011. xvi + 139 pages. $18.

Yokel: n. A country bumpkin; a naïve or gullible rustic:  “These conspirators were not all the unlettered yokels which some historians would have them to be” (E.P. Thompson). Perhaps from English dialectical yokel, green woodpecker (probably imitative of its note). 

--American Heritage Dictionary

Arnold would appreciate the irony of our ‘American’ dictionary citing The Rise of the English Working Class to describe what his backwoods folks are not. His Long Green Mountain Poem is a study in human ecology, and both the people and crises he shows us have now-obscure roots, of course, in the world of Thompson’s masterwork. Our poet has tilted word’s meaning though, for our Yokel is poet-conspirator and participant-observer, a green woodpecker hammering away at the insects in a tall tree. Someone we hear.

Native, the otherwise nameless protagonists who populate Arnold’s world, is the voiceless 21st century back country dweller, male or female, who inhabits (often but not exclusively) trailer, drives either a derelict junker, spiffy new Dodge trucks, or ancient tractor towing hay wagons now laden with defunct computers and other appliances to  pastureland dump. Native is poor; and the intrusion of manufactured trash in all its forms renders the poverty of his rural world even starker. In Back Road Archaeology, the male of the species cooks the family breakfast of pancakes then—

Tosse[s] the paper plate onto a year’s
Worth of paper plates on the back porch,
Each licked clean by his dogs.

In Native Never Made It, we read how he “got in/ With a wrong bunch”:

Much younger—
Drugs and drinking—
And they thought
Nothing about tanking
Up an old fart logger
With wicked cocaine
And dumping his
Gasping body of
At the emergency
Room entrance
From a car that
Never stopped—
Just like the movies

Both character and place have been poisoned by a virulent culture. Exotic/non-native industrial species are a threatening presence, turning up throughout the collection. A one-time Farmer now installs wood-pellet stoves that he doesn’t quite understand.  He drives “A beautiful pickup truck with the fanciest side mirrors/ on both doors. It seemed like 3D. Elsewhere, powerful men consider poisoning an old mill with toxic waste in order to preserve it from developers.

Poisoned and expropriated, Arnold’s Vermont is a third-world country. His Pastures of Plenty are reduced to a junkyard, or worse:

If it’s not a junkyard—then it will be real estate.
If it’s real estate—it will be a few new
Houses built lopsided on turgid ground
                                                   …ruined
By oil spills, junk metal and pallets of old
Batteries…

Arnold watches. As we know from such earlier books as On Stone, in which he records the subtleties of building a stone playhouse for his son Carson, he is nothing if not careful. (If you ever have the privilege of visiting his home, you will find the 10,000 books of his store and every tool in his workshop each in its place, ready to hand in the flash of an eye.) His craft, his design, is unobtrusive –no showy  bricoleur, but every element counts. Arnold’s informal pentameter, for example, argues with Frost, much as that poet argued with Emerson before him. We don’t have Frost’s family tragedies any longer, because the family has been eviscerated. What we see instead is the erasure of a world, in the trailers that replace wooden houses (only to be abandoned in turn as in Gone), in chance self-sufficiency so often overwhelmed by the presumptions of new-comer wealth. It would probably be stretching things to say that the class divide is as stark as one would see in the Dominican Republic, say, or to call this cultural genocide, but the continuum is pretty clear.

The poet lives in his world, though, and that life always feels stronger than the dangers that imperil it. We see this in two poems for his son Carson, reflecting that meticulous care mentioned above—

The Worst Thing About a Young Son

Your orderly
Toolbox will never
Be the same


One of the Best Things about a Young Son

That he cares
That you have a toolbox
In the first place

There are poems of profound affection for Susan (a longer collection – 30-plus years! is forthcoming) a magnificent poem for Richard Levasseur, and elegies for others who live again.  And there is the affirmation with which this Green Mountain poem ends, in which Arnold, like Thoreau of The Maine Woods, improves our ignorance:

Go-Along

stars
bright

enough
light

snowshoe
trail the

woods all
night

—john martone

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


Issue #155 of Lilliput Review was jam packed with a fine collection of short work.  You can find 5 fine examples in this past post.   And here's one more, from March 2007, to give you pause:

Early sun.
The snow-covered
manure pile
bright as Mount Fuji.

Don't talk to me
about enlightenment.

    Lynne Bama

nightingale --
even his shit
gets wrapped in paper.

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

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Ryokan, translated by Dennis Maloney

Bob and Susan Arnold of Longhouse Publishers have been issuing a delightful series of accordion-style fold out mini-booklets for quite sometime now, some of which I've taken a look at here at The Hut. Dennis Maloney, of White Pine Press fame, is a longtime Lilliput contributor, whose 4th chapbook in the Modest Proposal Chapbook series, a volume of Yosano Akiko translations, will be coming out sometime in June (along with 4 delayed issues of Lilliput Review). Previous chapbooks were Dusk Lingers: Haiku of Issa, The Unending Night: Japanese Love Poems, and The Turning Year: Japanese Nature Poems, the later two of which come from the famed 100 Poems by 100 Poets classic volume of Japanese poetry.

So it is with some delight that Dennis's volume of Ryōkan poems has arrived from Longhouse. And who was Ryōkan you might ask? According to the "New World Encyclopedia" site:

Ryōkan (良寛) (1758-1831) was a Zen Buddhist monk of the Edo period (Tokugawa shogunate 1603-1864), who lived in Niigata, Japan. He was renowned as a poet and calligrapher. He soon left the monastery, where the practice of Buddhism was frequently lax, and lived as a hermit until he was very old and had to move into the house of one of his supporters. His poetry is often very simple and inspired by nature. He was a lover of children, and sometimes forgot to go on his alms rounds to get food because he was playing with the children of the nearby village. Ryōkan was extremely humble and refused to accept any official position as a priest or even as a "poet." In the tradition of Zen, his quotes and poems show that he had a good sense of humor and didn't take himself too seriously. His poetry gives illuminating insights into the practice of Zen. He is one of the most popular Zen Buddhists today.

Over at Wikipedia, there is a bit of a dust up over the Buddhist monk part, but no doubt it isn't anything the poet himself would be much concerned about. There are, after all, poems to write, sake to drink, and life to be lived.

The Longhouse booklet, consisting of 2 minutely folded sheets contains an astounding 47 tankas, is divided into the four seasons. Ryōkan's simple message shines through poem after poem in translations with a direct clarity that mirror that basic philosophy. Here is a couple of samples to tempt you over to the Longhouse site for this tasty little booklet and lots more besides:

In the garden – just us
a plum tree
in full blossom
and this old man
long in years.

I'm sure there is more but what I think of first is how the old man's years seem so very like the plum tree's blossoms.

What shall remain
as my legacy?
The spring flowers,
the cuckoo in summer
the autumn leaves.

At once in this beautiful tanka, there is the Buddhist sense of oneness and perhaps a touch of the fact that we are all reincarnated a bit in what's is all about us. At least that's what I'm hoping when some of my ashes end up in the garden, some more in the river, and most of the last bit in the bay back home.

Ryōkan too
will fade like
the morning glories.
But his heart
will remain behind.

See previous comment ...

Deep snow outside
bundled up
in my solitary hut
I even feel my soul
slip away as dusk gathers.

The quiet beauty of these verses pervades one's spirit as the experiencing nature does. Not much exegesis, though perhaps there could be some, but let it rest: let me take in the rose rather than pluck its petals.

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

This week's feature Lilliput Review broadside is #80, from June 1996, entitled spectacles of poverty by scarecrow.

what is meant to be seen and heard
will be seen and heard
the blue of the sky
through a fly's wing
walking on my window
into a cloud.
in the shape of constant sorrow

how much the poem cannot carry
when you're the only one
there
to witness the pine cone falling.

the camera composed of metal taken from the ore
taken from the stone
beneath the grass
in the meadow
where the lion once slept
in the picture.

scarecrow

now begins
the Future Buddha's reign...
spring pines

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

PS Ed Baker has tipped us to an interview with Dennis Maloney which is a delight so I'll append it after the fact. All thanks to the bard of Takoma Park.

On The Acorn Book of Contemporary Haiku

In perusing my poetry shelves to see what was what, it occurred to me that, as a semi-regular feature, I could delve into the items found there and share a thought or two. So, the first couple of shelves consists of anthologies of Eastern or Eastern influenced verse, haiku, tanka, and traditional Chinese, Japanese, and Indian verse. In addition there are some modern anthologies of English and American verse in traditional forms, which brings us to the first item on the shelf, The Acorn Book of Contemporary Haiku, edited by Lucien Stryk and Kevin Bailey.

The first thing I realized about this book is that I must have purchased it on a London trip because it is going for ridiculous sums via amazon and has evidently never been published in the States. I bought it for 4.5 pounds, probably as a remainder at the Ulysses Bookshop near the British Museum.

I'm over halfway through the volume (so it goes for perusing part of this "project") and I have to say it is as fine a collection of contemporary haiku as I've run across. The hint of regret (have to say) I believe betrays the fact that I'm recommending something that is costly and difficult to get a hold of.

The volume's selection and tone bears all the earmarks of Stryk: poems stark, precise, and imagistic in nature. Stripped to the bone, the bones boiled, and placed out on large leaves, gleaming as they dry in the sun. Imagine my surprise when I ran smack into three poems that have graced past issues of Lilliput Review. Here they are:

Spring

The earth bears
everything,
even your sadness.

David Lindley

ancient headstones
the name and numbers
worn to murmurs.

William Hart

Summer

When the page was blank
no one thought, suddenly
a flower would appear.

David Lindley

One of the things that surprised me a bit was the lack of acknowledgment, a pet peeve of mine. Don't get me wrong; I don't think it is something a press or poet is obligated to do, it's just a courtesy. I explain to folks that it is akin to being accepted for publication for a poet/writer. It is a great lift and, most importantly, recognition of quality in the editorial process. This is not a gripe with this particular press or either poet, just me talking out loud. In my estimation, these are great examples of the finest work in haiku form and I'm proud to have helped them see the light of day. As far as I'm concerned, it is the poet who owns the work, from inception through publication and in any further incarnations, unless they explicitly sign that right away. And they'll never do that here at Lillie.

So, no harm, no foul ... just a little boy griping.

But I digress (and feel the better for it). Here's a selection of a few items that grabbed my attention and held it.

in the corpse's
half-closed eyes
the flame of a candle

Vasile Spinei

one word
but so many varieties
of rain

David Findley

Another robin in my mousetrap:
few of us fail to give
humanity a bad name.

Anthony Weir

The old barn
--looks more like a tree
----each year.

Hannah Mitte

late afternoon sun
the shadow of the gravestone
slants towards my feet

Brian Tasker

Works Gloves

On the garden gate
left here with me --
Shape of her hands

Bob Arnold

The white kitten
playing and playing
with the faded cherry petal

Vincent Tripi

Still in my garden
--------I bend to pluck a weed but
----------------see its smiling face.

Harold Morland

In the garden of Saleh
The silence is soothed
By the whispered lisp of leaves.

David Gascoyne

sunrise
the fisherman's shadow stretches
across the river

George Swede

A moorhen dives
Ripples spread
To the ends of the earth

Aasha Hanley

I hear the magpies
and you you have give me
this sense of longing.

Paul Finn

I was equally delighted to see a number of poets whose work has appeared in Lilliput featured in Acorn. From this selection alone are the fine poets George Swede, Vincent Tripi, and Bob Arnold. What is most amazing, really, is I've just dug through to the first layer of this exemplary volume. If I have the time and space, perhaps I'll highlight a few more poems from the 2nd half of this work sometime soon.

For an additional insightful, theoretical review (with a large selection of poems) of The Acorn Book of Contemporary Haiku, see Lynx Book Reviews (last review toward the bottom of the page - and from this review which I read after completing this post, I discovered another Lillie poem in the volume, from the 2nd half I haven't gotten to, this one by Gary Hotham).

****************************************

In the Bashô Haiku Challenge update, I can say that I've narrowed down the nearly 500 haiku received to somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 to 70 poems after two complete read-throughs. Lots of decisions still to made, one big one being exactly how long will this year's chapbook be. I believe I'll let content dictate form in this instance, so living with the poems for another two weeks or so should help answer that question very well.

****************************************

This week's featured issue is #152, from November 2006. Hope something grabs you here:

After Basho

Chrysanthemums bloom
in a gap between the silence
of the stonecutter's yard.

Michael Wurster

trumpet vine
still waiting
for you

David Gross

in the park
--struck
by a falling leaf

Peggy Heinrich

Four ancient rocks rose from the earth:
Grief, Rope, Axe, and Sparrow

Gail Ivy Berlin

And, before I flit off, one more:

baby sparrow--
even when people come
opening its mouth

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

Bob Arnold: Back Road Chalkies

Bob Arnold, one of the creative forces behind Longhouse Publications and an occasional Lilliput poet, has published on his website a project he calls Back Road Chalkies, the first of which is pictured above. I'll let him explain:

With chalk in hand, Back Road Chalkies is a landscape anthology I selected and gathered up over one year from 2007-2008. The chalkboard stanchion took a day to build and move on a wheelbarrow to its perch. Built from old lumber I took apart from an outdoor bookstall I had designed years earlier. The chalkboard was bought from a family of home schoolers for $5. The father of the brood asked, ‘What are you going to do with that?’ I said to drive by the house sometime and take a look. Maybe he has. All our neighbors have, but only two who liked to move on-foot ever said a word about it — smiled and said they looked forward to it. For awhile I was chalking up poems or sayings once a day, once a week, every few weeks, and over the long winter maybe just Thoreau would hold the fort. Jack London soon with him. A friend might write and tuck in a poem of their own and I’d share it immediately, or something in the world called for a line or two on the chalkboard, or the season asked for a poem, or the slant of light. Some of my own poems I just left unsigned, floating in the breeze. Nothing was planned, the day lay ahead. A poet visited and we welcomed him into a photograph with a lone, sturdy line of his poem already on the board. Then came some puppets, followed by a turtle. Maybe a dozen vehicles passed by on a winter day, double that for summer — neighbors, joggers, septic truck, log truck, plow, grader, tractor, one old farmer with an ATV, bicyclists, scooter, UPS, Fed Ex, convertible, horse & rider. Susan Arnold often took the photographs. And the tall and graceful tamarack I planted 35 years ago provided all the shade.

What you'll find here in this pdf document is 75 delightful pages, put together as described above as only Bob Arnold can. And for those who have been following the ongoing Basho posts here, the nod in Bob's title (as well as the first chalkie) is clear. Thanks once again to Ron Silliman for pointing it out.

This is a perfect example of why I love the net.

Here is a transcription of the above photo, in case the prints too small.

born of a dream
What can we know
of the real

Basho translated by Cid Corman

Hope you enjoy it.


best,
Don

Derek Walcott, Bill Deemer, and Some Near Perfect Books of Poems

As noted yesterday, there was more news than I could fit in one post. In particular, there is a truly beautiful poem in the May 15th New York Review of Books by Derek Walcott:



The Hulls Of White Yachts

The hulls of white yachts riding the orange water
of the marina at dusk, and, under their bowsprits the chuckle
of the chain in the stained sea; try to get there
before a green light winks from the mast and the foc'sle
blazes with glare, while dusk hangs in suspension
with crosstrees and ropes and a lilac-livid sky
with its beer stein of cloud froth touched by the sun,
as stars come out to watch the evening die.
In this orange hour the light reads like Dante,
three lines at a time, their symmetrical tension,
quiet bars rippling from the Paradiso
as a dinghy writes lines made by the scanty
metre of its oar strokes, and we, so
mesmerized can barely talk. Happier
than any man now is the one who sits drinking
wine with his lifelong companion under the winking
stars and the steady arc lamp at the end of the pier.



If ever there was a poem as painting, this is one; in addition, it is a poem to propel us onward through spring into summer. I haven't lived at the shore for 17 years and this whisked me back there as if it was yesterday. Although Lilliput is a mag dedicated to the short poem, Walcott's Omeros, a book length poem, comes highly recommended, indeed. This is just gorgeous work.

Here is a 2nd list of near perfect books of poems, sent along anonymously:


1. The Pill Versus the Springhill Mining Disaster by Richard Brautigan
2. Basho and His Interpreters by Makoto Ueda
3. Variations by Bill Deemer
4. Book of Haikus by Jack Kerouac


And a fine list it is. The one volume I was unfamiliar with was by Bill Deemer, who I was very happy to learn was published and is available from our friend Bob Arnold of Longhouse. While looking up info on Bill Deemer, I stumbled on an online collection of Twenty Poems. From that collection, the following beauty:



Ode

O little town, you are all America to me.
Two gas stations, one tavern, sunset the big event.
I'm glad the only traffic light always stops me.



So far, there have been two takers on the free subscription offer to Lilliput Review which ends next Thursday the 8th.

Hmn.

best,
Don

Japanese Love Poems & New Issues

The contributor copies of the new issues of Lilliput Review went out in the mail this past Monday and regular subscriber copies will begin hitting the mails over the next two weeks. It usually takes about a full month to get out the entire run, what with letters to be written, poems to be read and all the attendant details in getting scores of envelopes out each week.





#161 is graced with the photographs of Keddy Ann Outlaw, dedicated to the memory of her brother, Wade Stanton Outlaw. Among others, poems appear by John Martone, W. T. Ranney, Peggy Heinrich, Donny Smith, Charlie Mehrhoff, George Swede and translations of the Japanese tanka great, Yosano Akiko, by Dennis Maloney, 25 poems in all. 25 poems for a buck: you do the math.






#162 is a broadside issue by David Chorlton, who has been appearing in Lillie since its inception, way back in 1989. David is a consummate artist; this issue, entitled Venetian Sequence, showcases his beautifully lyrical poetry and his own artwork, as seen above. Here's a poetic taste:


Paganini

His audience applauds,
convinced he is the devil
who never sleeps.
After the performance
he sails to the dead.
Their breath steams out of frozen marble
when he plays. They whisper
each one to the next, that the time has come
to grow back their flesh
and complete abandoned vices.




Cover by Edward O'Durr Supranowicz

Spotlighted this week is LR #148, published in February 2006. The issue opens with 5 poems by a variety of poets with the common thread of our place in nature: they are deceptively simple. It is a fine coming together of work by 5 grounded poets; it was a privilege to publish. Issa would be proud.



Stopping as a crow
alights in a snowed pine copse
-the poem composed

Rebecca Lily

yesterday's snow---
the place it melts
to

Gary Hotham

this spring
the birds are nesting
where his garden was

Joyce Austin Gilbert

Monet
in his private garden
and vice versa

Pete Lee

Suddenly

spring
like

and
so

are
we

Bob Arnold

Besides these 5, there are 24 more poems in #148, many like-minded, all worth a look. As with regular issues, back issues from #1 through #160 are available for a buck apiece or a SASE (self-addressed stamped envelope). If the price is still too dear (and who's to say) more free samples may be found in the past posts of this blog or in the back issue archive at the Lilliput homepage.

Finally, there is that matter of Unending Night, as pictured at the top of this post. Unending Night is a selection of Japanese love poems drawn from the classic Japanese tanka anthology, The Hyakunin Isshu or 100 Poems by 100 Poets. The Hyakunin Isshu was compiled in the thirteenth century by Fujiwara no Teika and is the most popular of the classic poetry anthologies of Japan.

This selection from 100 Poems ... is translated by Dennis Maloney and Hide Oshiro and is #18 in the Modest Proposal Chapbook series published by Lilliput Review. The chapbook features the poetry of 18 different classic Japanese poets and provides a unique lens through which to view this much loved anthology. The finishing touches are being put on Unending Night even as I type (i.e. it's being printed) and will be available by the end of the week. Price, as always for chapbooks, is $3.00, postpaid.

best till next week,
Don