Literary Kings by Late July: Issa's Sunday Service, #65

It's time for a first here at the Sunday Service: the featured song, "Literary Kings," is by an indie singer/songwriter.  Late July is the artist and she has new her EP, her first, entitled Side Swept.  If you've followed things around here lately, you probably recognize the name.  I've mentioned the website "Miss Late July" a couple of times regarding some excellent music (and musing) postings in recent weeks.  We connected over blues (MLJ thinks it might have been Sister Rosetta Tharpe) or Eastern poetry or philosophy (I was thinking Basho or Issa, but whadda I know).  Just yesterday she posted this powerful video of one of my all-time favorite bluesmen, Lightnin' Hopkins.

Obviously, I'm very glad we connected.  Her 5 song Side Swept EP is solid, indeed.  You can pre-listen to and download  the whole of Side Swept at the same place that you can make a donation if you do decide to download it.  It may also be purchased here.  I slapped dough on the virtual table and downloaded it and have been listening incessantly at home and on the mp3 player all week long. There's a real kinship between the small press and indie music.  Why not support a new artist like you'd support a new lit mag?  Still on the fence? Here's the video for "Literary Kings:"









Love the Kabuki-reminiscent death mask in the vid.  And the song with a literary title has a hook that just won't quit.

Thanks, MLJ, for representing when it comes to indies and for all the great music.  It'd be great for this song to start an indie trend here at The Hut.


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Issue #99 from October 1998 provides today's feature poem, by the artist and poet John Harter.  John, who used eccentric spelling and typed everything in caps, died a few years back, highlighting another level of meaning in the following:

I TURN ON THE LIGHT AND LEAVE

John Harter

Here's an extra poem from #99 for those of you who've been following for awhile, since John's poem already appeared here 3 years back.   This poem has the narrative quality and slightly surreal feel of many a fine poem by the excellent David Chorlton.  Enjoy.

Between The Lines

The minute hand waves from the clock
to say I am only time, do not take me so seriously,
and the waiting passengers distract themselves
by reading.  Late again, how quickly
life goes past, they say to themselves
while they skim the news, page after terrible page.
Only when the first of them stands on his briefcase
to deliver a speech does the fine print fly
from the paper as a flock of doves, each
with an olive branch in its beak.

David Chorlton

And, finally, because I seem to be thinking of dead friends quite a bit lately, here is Ringo, performing a song that now is forever linked with George, due to his lovely dedication at the concert for George.  Because of copyright restrictions on the concert, here is a different equally wonderful performance of "Photograph" from Ringo (check out the band).  Since I don't wish to forget what Ringo said and why I'm posting it, here's a photograph to look at:

at the sound of the sunset
bell...
wildflowers

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue 

best,
Don

PS Following up on a recent Sunday Service that featured "A Whiter Shade of Pale," here's a Bill Griffith comic take on that song from his strip this week (click to enlarge)

"The groom was strumming harder
As th' earwig flew away ...
When we called out for a hyperlink
Th' ghost lost his toupee"

Blues & Haiku: Big Mama Thornton & Peggy Heinrich

Over the years, Peggy Heinrich has published a number of outstanding haiku in the pages of Lilliput Review. 10 of her works were recently featured at santacruz.com. Of the featured haiku, I was particularly touched by:

holding my breath
until the cormorant
resurfaces

Peggy Heinrich

This, of course, reminds me of Bashō's cormorant poem, featured and discussed in a previous post. Here's Bashō, as translated by Lucien Stryk:

Cormorant fishing
how stirring
how saddening.

Bashō
translated by Lucien Styrk

For those unfamiliar with cormorant "fishing," the following explanation comes from that earlier post:

The verse about the cormorant fishing perhaps needs a gloss. Fisherman commonly used the cormorant to fish by tying a string around its neck so when the bird snared a fish it couldn't swallow and the "fisherman" would simply remove the fish and put the bird back in the water. Not quite fishing with hand grenades, but certainly in the same mode. What really captures the true Basho spirit here is that he is both stirred and saddened, he still sees the miracle of nature despite the appalling behavior of nature's "highest creation", man.

Peggy manages to capture the idea of being stirred, as in Styrk's version of Bashō, with a suggestion of sadness or, perhaps, horror.

Another poem that resonates from this selection seems so basic, so simple in image and execution, to approach cliché, and yet, and yet (as Issa said of the dewdrop world):

ebb tide
turning to look back
at my footprints

Peggy Heinrich

In some ways, this is a perfect modern haiku: precise, concise, a literal image capturing a specific moment that resonates mightily. There is not one wrong word here and each carries its weight. Three words are at this poems core: ebb, turning, and back. What each one of those words means individually and collectively makes the poem come together. It is something anyone whose been to a shoreline has experienced. Mixed in that experience is the cosmic feel of place, a sense of self as self, a sense of self as part of the whole, a sort of returning, a vague bit of romantic nostalgia ...

But, ah, I'm projecting and that's the point of great haiku, the interaction of reader and poem, bringing one's own experience to bear. The poem has a feeling of ending, but it could just as well be about beginning, or both.

A genuine haiku moment, so simple it might easily be overlooked, as we overlook things, ordinary things, each and every day. Haiku moments. Moments.

The now.


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On to the then, to risk a trite segue. Here is a moment, courtesy of Miss Late July (who also recently posted this), that is just too good for words. Big Mama Thornton. A very young Buddy Guy.

And, because once you get something like this started you can't stop, see if this one doesn't blow you out of the water:

Ok, so three's a charm: this one's for Janis (there is a reason this link has over 6 million hits), who was a huge fan of Big Mama (turn it UP):

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Featured this week are two poems from the archive, from Lilliput Review #143 (June 1993), to mull over:

when you say 'bird'
do you feel
your wings unfurl?

Jean Michel Guilliaumond

A Melody by Haydn

wild plums --- just --- out -of ---reach

James Magorian

And one from the master:

not giving a damn
that plum blossoms fall...
his stern face

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don