alter-world: old pajamas

What is it we ask of the modern short-form poet, the modern haiku poet? What do we want, what is necessary in a short poem?

What do we need?

To get close to an answer to any, or all, of these questions perhaps we should be asking most importantly: what do we ask of ourselves when it comes to poetry as readers and, for some, as poets?

Old Pajamas (aka Alan Segal) is an excellent poet working in short forms for whom form itself is mercurial, form is protean, form is content's shadow. Like contemporary masters Cid Corman, John Martone, and Charlie Mehrhoff, he knows where the lines are and chooses to dance over and amongst them.

For my two cents, Old Pajamas would be a candidate for inclusion in a second edition of Haiku in English, as would Ed Baker, another fine purveyor of 'shorties' as he is wont to call them on any given day, work don't fit any strict definition but is all heart and spirit and soul.

Is the pen name 'Old Pajamas' off-putting? Just think about the various pen-names of so many Japanese poets. Even the masters - Bashō's name means banana leaf or tree, Issa's cup-of-tea, Buson's midnight studio, and Shiki's cuckoo. 

As far as English goes, Old Pajamas sounds just fine to me. 

The new collection he sent along is a limited hardcover edition, 1 of 25 printed.The book is entitled alter-world and here are four of my favorites from it:

Photo by Hadi Fooladi

ah
the butterfly
not an actor

Photo by Amour Perdu

that you're in black
flower and scaly
while I'm paleness
blinking in the dark
is enough enough for us

Photo by flugflugfunmangel

in one cricket
the sound is weary

Photo by Seth Anderson

BLOWER MOTOR #4

mad with rust  / /  camellias in bloom




Regular readers of this blog will recognize this last poem (and photo) as having appeared previously on Wednesday Haiku. 

Looking at these four pieces superficially they seem to be all over the place, form-wise. Yet, there is a unifying element among them, one of the major components of traditional haiku.

All four are firmly ground in nature.

Now, arguments could certainly be had, one way or the other, as to which, if any, are haiku, and which are not. I have my opinions and I'll keep them (mostly) to myself. 

One thing I will say is that they are all haiku-like or, even more generally, fine brief poems.   

alter-world is not available to purchase, so there is no pitch here. However, you can find more of Alan's work, from alter-world and and other places, at old pajamas: from the dirt hut. It is definitely worth your while. There is also a more extensive review of an earlier collection, Drenched Through at Old Age, here.


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Photo by Mo

when will it become
a cricket's nest?
my white hair

Issa
trans. by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

PS  Click to learn how to contribute to Wednesday Haiku

Cid Corman: Yet

I have fond memories of my correspondence with Cid Corman over the years: a generous man, a resonant poet, and an insightful master of life's great mystery.

If you don't know what that great mystery is, pick up a collection of Cid's work and you'll soon find out. You'll find no obfuscating there.

My friends at the local used and rare bookshop, Caliban Books, know something of my tastes and so, one day a year or two back when I stepped in, they handed me the little volume, pictured above, that they had put aside for me when it came in.

And I've been meaning to write about it ever since. 

A tiny little volume that fits nicely in the palm of your hand, yet was published in an edition of 500 copies by Elizabeth Press in New Rochelle, NY, in March 1974, finely stitched as you can see above. It contains 18 poems, if you count the dedication and coda pieces, which I do. And they are little gems, these 18 poems. As an example:



Cicadas
cling 
to what

there is
to 
cling to too



There's that mystery, right out of the gate. The final "too" breaks through to where the poem was destined to go, in the process carrying the full weight of its meaning. I thought immediately of Master Bashō's poem about a cricket:


How solitary it is!
Hanging on a nail -
a cricket


And another from Cid:


Shaken
is the bell of silence

Transparent
body
transparent

emptiness
listening
unquenched



Each word, precisely chosen, precisely placed.  Precise.

Here is a little something a bit unusual for Cid, and beautiful:


Beautiflies
and bizzies
making their

curious
approaches
to what stands

up to them
as part of
their pursuit


No, those aren't typos in the 1st and 2nd lines. No typos at all.


From bamboo
flask into
bamboo cup

emptiness
the source of
drunkenness


Though this has little to do with haiku and syllable count, if you look (and listen) closely you will see that Cid's precision is not by any means limited to meaning and particular word selection.

I believe you've got it now. My friends at Caliban are special. A tip o' the hat their way. 

Though a limited edition, as mentioned above, there are 9 copies available through abebooks, most of them in fine condition, ranging with shipping from 13 to 40 dollars, all waiting like a beautifly to settle perfectly in the palm of your hand. There's a couple available via amazon, too, but not in as good a condition, so I'll let you find them yourself.

~~~~~

Butterfly and wisteria by Anonymous

on the flower pot
does the butterfly, too

hear Buddha's promise?

Issa
trans. by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

PS  Click to learn how to contribute to Wednesday Haiku  

Lorine Niedecker: from Blue Chicory - Small Press Friday

In his preface to Blue Chicory, a collection of the work of Lorine Niedecker, edited by Cid Corman, he noted:

The poems in the first part of this collection, heretofore unseen in book form, are those that seem largely to have been "abandoned"  by the poet as perhaps not up to her best work, since they were available for the Fulcrum edition of The Collected Poems. Nevertheless, they seem to me to warrant safer keeping here - even when they are variants on other pieces.

Here are four very brief poems from the first part of Blue Chicory - it is hard to deny Cid's assertion that they "warrant safer keeping."

                  Frog noise
                  suddenly stops

Listen!
They turned off
    their lights 

~~~~~

In the transcendence 
of convalescence
the translation
of Bashō

These two poems follow one upon the other in Blue Chicory and it would be a stretch to imagine that they are unrelated, either for the poet or the editor that has placed them thus. The first, though not a variant of Bashō's famed frog ku, does bring it to mind, centering as it does on sound, and being placed as it is before "In the transcendence," which does reference the earlier master poet.

This second poem at first recalls, for those familiar with the classic Japanese haiku masters, Shiki rather than Bashō, but upon close inspection such speculation is most probably beside the point. 

The moment captured here is simply as stated. All who have experienced prolonged convalescence or illness know what the transcendence is of which she speaks. To encounter a particular translation of Bashō during (or perhaps sparked by) such a volatile state might make for an astounding moment, indeed.

The radio talk this morning
was of obliterating
the world

I notice fruit flies rise 
from the rind
of the recommended 
melon  

Here is a poem truly in the spirit of haiku, even if worked out more to tanka length, and beyond. The connection which crackles in the rubbing together of two seemingly disparate elements is the essence of haiku.

And what you liked
or did -
no matter

once the moon
dipped down
and fish rose
from under 

This is an ominous tone that certainly relates to the first stanza of "The radio"." Just swap out the second stanzas in these two poems to see how tonally similar they truly are, and how very ominous, too.

Cid concludes his introduction with the following:

Her father planted trees for their community, where they stand still and more tall. She planted words where "carp-fed roots" sing every moment we light them that much taller yet. I leave you with her flowering shade.

Published by the Elizabeth Press back in 1976, this is not an easy volume to get a hold of economically (check the first link above for possible copies). More small press history than Small Press Friday, it would behoove a reader to keep an eye out for a copy to grace shelf and mind.

~~~~~ 

old pond--
please, you go first
frog jumping

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

 

 

 

best,

Don

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Lillie poem archive

 

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Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 178 songs

Issa's Sunday Service, #131: Ehson Rad & D. Kent Watson, via Guest DJ, Ed Baker

William Butler Yeats, attributed to John Butler Yeats

As most know who tread the creative path, the very best things are birthed in the moment of inspiration, the moment of un-thought, spontaneous, serendipitous, alive.  And so, the birthing of the guest DJ on Issa's Sunday Service, with this winning bit of musical adaptation by Ehson Rad and D. Kent Watson (I wanted to type by the awesome folk rock duo "Rad and Watson" but I don't want to be too spontaneous ...). The song is an adaptation of William Butler Yeats's pointed poem, Politics.

Oh, and who might this guest DJ/MC be?  Why the inestimable Ed Baker, of course, poet/artist/raconteur/lover and now Guest DJ.  First the poem, then the song ...



Politics
  `In our time the destiny of man presents its meanings in
   political terms' - Thomas Mann

     How can I, that girl standing there,
     My attention fix
     On Roman or on Russian
     Or on Spanish politics?
     Yet here's a travelled man that knows
     What he talks about,
     And there's a politician
     That has read and thought,
     And maybe what they say is true
     Of war and war's alarms,
     But O that I were young again
     And held her in my arms!

     W. B. Yeats

While he's at it, Ed is also recommending connecting with the avant band "Sun Rock Man", via Professor Martin Jack Rosenblum. Ed says:

these guys shades of Cage and Glass and Xenakis and Schoenberg and Antheil & etc I like the discordant way they progress back into the darkness(silence)

There is the Cid Corman connection and Carl Rakosi was mentioned, too.  Some of "Sun Rock Man's" debut videos can be found on YouTube and, so, I'm passing along those, too, for the experimentally minded.

Looking through some of Cid's volumes, a number of postcards and a letter fell out of one (Aegis), and on one of the cards, this:




Death explains
every
thing at once

Cid Corman

rainstorm--
monk-like on a rock, under a tree
a minor official

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

PS. Get 2 free issues. Get 2 more free issues

Lillie poem archive

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

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 131 song

 

Santoka: Some Further Translations

Last month, I did a post for which Scott Watson allowed me to share some of his thoughts on translation, along with 5 of his excellent renderings of the work of Santoka. In response, in order to prompt to continued thought and, perhaps, even talk on the subject, Charlie Trumbull sent along some translations of the same poems from his ongoing Haiku Database project. I asked him for more info on the project and he sent it, kindly granting permission to reprint the overview here:

The Haiku Database Project

A

while ago I was in the library looking for the text of a certain poem and was grateful for those anthologies that featured a first-line index of the contents. I had the thought that it would be wonderful to have a first-line or subject index of the best English-language haiku. But then, I continued, since haiku are so short, why not a full-text index? And while we’re at it, since we’re effectively talking only about 40 years of English haiku activity, why not a comprehensive, inclusive database?

The Haiku Database in an attempt to do just that: to put into a searchable, sortable, electronic database all important haiku that have appeared in English. I began working on the project in September 1998 and so far (end of June 2010) have captured almost 220,000 haiku. An unscientific guess is that the total number of English haiku published in the journals, anthologies, and individual collections is about twice that number. The Database grows at a rate of more than 20,000 haiku a year.

I began — because it was easy — by copying materials from on-line haiku sites and journals, including Dogwood Blossoms (the first Internet haiku journal), the Shiki Internet Haiku Salon biweekly kukai, Dhugal Lindsay’s Web site (which includes a few issues of Futoh), the wonderful sites constructed by Jane Reichhold, ai li, Elizabeth St Jacques, Randy Brooks, John Hudak, and others. Next, I targeted the major English-language anthologies, and have so far included Cor van den Heuvel’s The Haiku Anthology (all three editions), Bruce Ross’s Haiku Moment, Jim Kacian’s annual Red Moon Anthologies (1996–2008) and the first five volumes in the New Resonance series (1999–2007), the San Francisco, Canadian, Australian, and two New Zealand anthologies, the British Haiku Hundred and Iron Book of Haiku, Zoe Savina’s huge international anthology, and many others.

Journals and individual collections are next. I have finished entering systematically the full runs of a few journals including American Haiku, Haiku West, Haiku Quarterly (Arizona), Woodnotes, Black Bough, South by Southeast, Acorn, Still, and Frogpond, and have begun working on Modern Haiku, Cicada, Dragonfly, Blithe Spirit, and Brussels Sprout. As for Internet sources, the Database includes Reflections, Haiku Light, The Heron’s Nest, Tinywords, Roadrunner, and Simply Haiku as well as much material from the English-language haiku columns in Japanese newspapers such as Mainichi and Asahi.

The Database focuses on haiku in English, but translations into English are also included. The Database now includes the contents of first three volumes of R.H. Blyth’s Haiku, as well as all of his two-volume History of Haiku. All the Peter Pauper haiku books have been extracted, as has the first volume of Toshiharu Oseko’s Bashô’s Haiku and many other translations into English of Japanese haiku. David Lanoue’s astonishing online database of Issa’s work was added at the end of 2007. Important individual collections are being captured as well, including Jane Reichhold’s massive Dictionary of Haiku (both the print and on-line editions; more than 4,800 haiku), Richard Wright’s Haiku: This Other World, and Jack Kerouac’s Book of Haikus.

Criteria for inclusion of a haiku are basically that it should have appeared in print (or in an online journal) in English. A few haiku in other languages are included, some translated, some not; these may form the core of a non-English haiku database some time in the future. Verses included as part of haiga or haibun are included if, in our opinion, they can stand alone as independent haiku. Except for the hokku, verses of renku are generally not included, nor generally are rengay, tanka, cinquains, and the like. In the case of concrete poems and short verses of haiku length, we generally try to be inclusive rather than exclusive. Children’s haiku are included, but gathering them is a low priority.

Data collected for each haiku include the text (including as much of the formatting as possible), the author, publication history, date of composition (or, more commonly, date of first publication), and notes. For haiku translated from languages other than English, notably Japanese, the original text (in the original orthography and in a romanized version, if applicable), the name of the translator, and date of translation are also included. These data permit searches on specific kigo and comparisons of various translations of a haiku by, say, Bashô, even when the English texts are very different. Other fields in the database assist in sorting by season, season words, attributes (e.g., rhyme), etc.

The purpose of The Haiku Database is to make it easier for serious students to locate and study haiku — i.e., it is a finding tool. So far the database has proved useful to poets wishing to check the originality of their own work and in a few cases has helped identify cases of plagiarism in haiku contests. It has been useful for authors writing about haiku, preparing newspaper columns or journal articles, and compiling anthologies to have at hand large selection of examples, together with original publication information.

Clearly, any sort of commercial use or making the database freely available—e.g., on the Web—is out of the question, and I will not publish any raw search data. I would, however, like to make the existence of this resource known and make the search capability available to others in the haiku community. Please let me know if you are looking for a specific haiku or want to know what use has been made of, for example, “pampas grass” or “Christmas” in haiku. Within reason, I’ll be happy to run a search for you.

The poems that follow are in the order of the original post as translated by Scott Watson. I haven't reproduced Scott's renderings again as it isn't a question, in my mind (nor, I believe, Charlie's either), which one is better or worse etc. It is simply a further glimpse into the mind of the original poet, Santoka; more takes on his language, imagery, and thought. It is a way to expand our understanding and further the conversation. As Cid Corman said

Poetry is that
conversation we could not
otherwise have had.

Cid Corman
Lilliput Review, #103

落ち葉ふる奥深く御仏をみる
ochiba furu oku fukaku Mihotoke o miru

Dead leaves fall, in the depth, I see the Buddha

Hiroaki Sato, Cicada 2:3 (1978)



Fallen leaves
Deep in the forest
I see a Buddha.

John Stevens, Santôka, Mountain Tasting #223; different format with translator not given, in Simply Haiku [Web] 3:3 (autumn 2005)




空襲警報るいるいとして柿あかし
kûshû keihô ruirui to shite kaki akashi

The air-raid alarm
Screaming, screaming;
Red persimmons.

John Stevens, Santôka, Mountain Tasting #160; different format with translator not given, in Simply Haiku [Web] 3:3 (autumn 2005)




死人とりまく人々に雲もなきそらや
shinin torimaku hito-bito ni kumo mo naki sora ya

no other translations




うれしいたよりもかなしいたよりも春の雪ふる
ureshii tayori mo kanashii tayori mo haru no yuki furu

Good news,
Bad news;
Spring snow falls.

John Stevens, Santôka, Mountain Tasting #215




しぐるるや死なないでゐる
shigururu ya shinu naide iru

Cold winter rain;
I am still alive.

R.H. Blyth, Blyth, History of Haiku II:181





Downpour, dead I’m not

Hiroaki Sato, Cicada 2:1 (1978)





Winter shower I'm still not dead

Hiroaki Sato, Santôka, Grass and Tree Cairn, 7





late autumn rain;
not yet dying

and

late autumn rain;
yet not dying

Stephen Wolfe, Wolfe, "Wreath of Weeds," 219






It’s drizzling,
Here I am,
Still alive.

Hisashi Miura and James Green, Selected Haiku from Sômokutô


For further info on the Haiku Database Project, you may contact Charles Trumbull at:


trumbullc AT comcast DOT net (all one phrase, with AT standing in for @ and DOT standing in for .)


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This week's featured poem comes from Lilliput Review, #145 and, since this post has been about translation, what can be more fitting than this little tanka, from the seminal 100 Poems by 100 Poets collection (a full translation of which may be found here):

The mountain pheasant's tail
trails long behind
–longer still
is my loneliness
in the unendingly long night.

Kakinomoto-no Hitomaro
translated by Dennis Maloney & Hide Oshiro

completing
the green mountain
a pheasant cries

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

Jim Carroll by Tom Clark

Photograph by Mary K. Greer

One of the finest artist produced blogs on the net is by the great poet, Tom Clark. Beyond the Pale serves as a model for poets and writers wishing to produce content and extend the dialogue of author/reader beyond the printed page into the much vaunted digital world. The net is not a source of promotion for Clark, as the book before it was not the point of writing; it is the connection of one mind to another or, in the case of writers, many others. I, as a reader, like to think of the experience as one on one, poet and reader, one at a time.

The line may be long, but the poet will get to you eventually.

Back on September 11th 2009, when the poetic/writing community lost Jim Carroll, it hit a particular segment very hard. Disbelief, as it always is with untimely death, was the predominant reaction. One looks around, shakes one's head, tries to get mind around the idea of death. Grief prompts something like an irrational, inconsolable searching. We've all been there, with those closest to us to those we "know," share a deep kinship with, through their work.

It is significant that we characterize this type of kinship with the feeling of having been "touched"; I was deeply touched by the work of Jim Carroll. And for others, like myself, who went looking for an "explanation," or that other type of kinship, shared mourning, we found something profoundly moving.

We found Tom Clark on Jim Carroll.

Back in September, on the 14th, a mere 3 days after Jim's passing, Tom Clark posted his memories of Jim. Somehow, his glimpses into the life of Carroll were just what folks needed to hear. The few scenes were significant, sketched as they were by his friend Clark, a powerful memoirist. Those glimpses, with a touch of poetry by both poets, began a healing process for a community of readers who had always felt that Jim was close to them in spirit.

I'm happy to say, though blogs come and go as quickly as the seasons, Bob Arnold of Longhouse Publications has published Tom's post in a little 23 page booklet that, with the exception of a one photo and minus one or two that were on the blog, essentially replicates that post in its entirety.

The handful of tales Clark recounts of Carroll signify. Jim's deep bond with his dog during his protracted period of kicking dope, his reluctance at pickup games of basketball, his reaching out to a woman reading her poetry at a rehab session, all of these moments, though seemingly small details in a much larger life, feel like a full portrait of a poet that many a whole biography might fail to capture. Clark's account of his own distaste for poetry readings quickly dissipates watching Jim reading to a room of 10 fellow recovering substance abusers:

It was totally mesmerizing; I felt privileged, uplifted, and scared. While reading Jim seemed to leave himself and become the conductor of energies from another place. I understood then I was in the presence of a master, his powers palpable yet perhaps beyond the understanding of anyone present.

Jim Carroll fans will always have Living at the Movies, The Book of Nods, The Basketball Diaries, Fear of Dreaming, Void of Course and Forced Entries, as well as his great rock recordings. And now we have this little set of scenes in which Jim comes to life once again in a way that only a friend and master stylist can make happen. Though it might be both premature and presumptuous to think the inevitable full length biography might not capture Jim as well as this short little memoir, it can surely be said that no one will capture the tone and feel of Tom Clark's thoughts on the great Jim Carroll. If you think this is just the publication for you, jump at it since this little booklet is a limited run (see Tom's note about run in comments below) . I know it will always sit right next to Jim's work on the shelf with all of his writings I have on hand.

There is a photo, by Beatrice Murch, that concludes the book and wasn't on Tom's original post [CORRECTION: This photo did appear in Tom's original post. See his comment, below.] It is a photo of a path out in Bolinas just like the ones Clark describes Jim as often traversing with his dog, Jo'mama, all the while wrestling with loneliness and his various demons. Perhaps it is one of the very paths he walked.

A path that is now empty.

The Birth and Death of the Sun

Now the trees tempt
the young girl below them

each moves off the other's wind
endlessly, as stars from the earth,
stars from the stars.

Jim Carroll

Thanks to Bob Arnold for making this available.

And thanks to Tom Clark, for everything.

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This week's featured poem comes from Lilliput Review #100, a broadside by Cid Corman entitled "You Don't Say."

Here is a
long way off
and as far
as you'll've
ever got.

Cid Corman

at my feet
when did you get here?
snail

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

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PS Books mentioned in this post. Support Independent booksellers.

Living at the Movies
The Book of Nods
The Basketball Diaries
Fear of Dreaming
Void of Course
Forced Entries

Cid Corman: Five Years Gone

Cid Corman, Ed Baker, Ted Enslin, Chuck Sandy

Ed Baker calls our attention to the fact that last week was the 5th anniversary of the death of Cid Corman. It is hard to believe that it has been so long since this gentle soul, master poet and translator, and mentor has been gone.

Cid was incredibly generous with his work, from the largest to the smallest places, the last of which I can formally attest to. He published two broadsides, "You Don't Say" and "Only," and two chapbooks, No Choice and Now/Now, here at Lilliput Review. Now/Now, I believe, was the last collection to appear while he was still alive; he proofed it in late December 2003 and it was published in January 2004, at which time he had all ready been stricken ill.

Shizumi, Cid, Anne Waldman


The above pictures are courtesy of Ed, who recalls Cid's straight-to-the-point way and salient advice about poems and life. He had time for all who approached him. He lived and breathed poetry and his life of near poverty attests to the low esteem in which we hold our poets, even our great ones. Ed put it succinctly when he observed that Cid's loss leaves a whole in "meaning - a silence."

A silence.

You are missed, Cid.


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


Sunday also marked the anniversaries of the deaths of two other literary luminaries, H. P. Lovecraft and Lady Gregory. Lovecraft is one of my many cultivated vices; when it comes to pulp fiction, he, along with Robert E. Howard, is a master par excellence.

Lady Gregory was a major figure of the Irish Literary Renaissance, though her works have largely fallen into obscurity for all but Irish literature aficionados. Lady Gregory helped revive older works of Celtic literature that, in their turn, had also slipped away at the dawn of the 20th century. One such work, the poem/ballad Donal Og, was revived in John Huston's last film, The Dead, which was based on the final story in James Joyce's short story collection, The Dubliners. I featured a video of the recitation of the poem in a previous post. I believe it's good enough for a reprisal, so here it is:






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


Finally, today is the anniversary of the passing of one the great blues guitar men, T. Bone Walker. If we gotta go, let's go dancing. Enjoy.

best,
Don

PS New poem of the day is up on Twitter ...

Sunday with Cid Corman

It's Sunday with small press giant and self-effacing pioneer, Cid Corman. PennSound has a whole page dedicated to his readings.

I can't think of anything more spiritual for a lapsed agnostic like myself than to sit back and soak in his wisdom.


Cid Corman at PennSound.


The fourth section of the readings contains an interview and question and answer period, with Cid and an audience communicating via telephone. There is a lot of personal history in the one hour plus broadcast, with some poems at the end. If you'd rather forgo the beginning, the poems from the hour long interview are broken out separately in listings 2 through 18.

Happy Sunday. Enjoy.


best,
Don


pennsound recordings

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

Cid Corman, Etheridge Knight, Wendell Berry and the Art of Hearing Silence

Artwork by Albert Huffstickler

A couple of items of interest this week. Etheridge Knight has appeared twice in the news in the last little while. His work is featured in issue #7 of Presa, with a remembrance in an article entitled "Lest We Forget" by Ronnie Lane. Indeed. Knight was one of the most straightforward, powerful poets to emerge from the 60's, his first collection being published by Broadside Press while he was still in prison. In addition, Mary Karr has published a remembrance and poem by Knight in her most recent Poet's Choice column in the Washington Post. Here's another poem that gets down to the essence: Feeling Fucked Up.

 
This week is also the birthday of another of our contemporary greats, Wendell Berry. The following is one of his most famous poems and its got it all:

The Peace of Wild Things


When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night to the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives might be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world and am free.

Wendell Berry

Happy birthday, Mr. Berry.

The last item in the news this week is a sad one. Though they fought a valiant battle, Acres of Books in Long Beach, CA, will be closing. Even the mighty Ray Bradbury couldn't stem the continuous tide of failing bookshops. It is, indeed, a very sad day.





Recently, I have been complaining of the dearth of good modern poetry books, at least the ones I've been reading (or, alternately, the fact that I've finally been broken on the poetic wheel). I'm happy to report that I've run into one I can heartily recommend: The Next One Thousand Years: the Selected Poems of Cid Corman. Edited by Ce Rosenow and Bob Arnold and published by Bob and Susan Arnold's Longhouse Publishers, this generous selection of Cid's work was just the thing to get me off the anti-lyrical snide. This particular collection of Cid's work highlights his translations of both classic and modern works, as well as his own work. Over 70 of the 190 plus pages are devoted to translations. If Basho, Issa, Saigyo, Rilke and Rumi are your poets of preference, you will see them through new eyes when you see them through Cid's translations. His own work is, for me, the highlight however. Cid was so prolific that there probably could be a different version of his selected works for each year in the title of this volume. The selection here is spot-on, covering his entire career. I found myself marking for further review the poems of his later years, when his work was honed down to sparse, scintillating points. Here are a couple to whet your taste:

I will tell you the secret.
Listen.


What is it? - you ask?
I keep telling you:


----------------------Listen.

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

Ask me when
I am dead
the meaning


of this. Then
each word will
answer you.

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

Of course,
life matters.
Twitter,


sparrow
and let me
know it.

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

If you are a fan of Cid's, from Lilliput or his Modest Proposal chapbooks or his numerous other works, this is a must-have collection. Hopefully, there is much, much more to come.



This week's featured issue from the Lilliput archive is #106, from September 1999. Enjoy.

Truth Is The Person Who Is There


The sky meets the mountain with no further
obligation.

Geoff Bouvier

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

Soft, sandy fine earth,
I draw her initials in
your impermanence.

Linda Zeiser

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

Love this man
-------and you will attain nothing
Ah! to love the sea!------

Kane Way

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

crossing the verrazano-narrows

eat beef
be well
try sontag
she's old

Laura Joy Lustig

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

her
orgasm
face

McMurtagh

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

Through the silence
--------another silence
gathers around her lips

Carl Mayfield

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

best,
Don

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