Lyric for a Lazy Sunday Afternoon: Richard Brautigan

Photo by Alexander Rapp

"A Baseball Game" Part 7

Baudelaire went
to a baseball game
and bought a hot dog
and lit up a pipe
of opium.
The New York Yankees
were playing
the Detroit Tigers.
In the fourth inning
and angel committed
suicide by jumping
off a low cloud.
The angel landed
on second base,
causing the whole infield
to crack like
a huge mirror.
The game was
called on
account of
fear.

   - Richard Brautigan

Photo by Schyler

lying down
it looks like a handball...
spring mountain 

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,

Don

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The BBC and Richard Brautigan's All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace

There is a new promising BBC series that takes its name from Richard Brautigan's famous poem: "All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace."   As the tagline for the series goes, it is a "series of films about how humans have been colonised by the machines they have built. Although we don't realise it, the way we see everything in the world today is through the eyes of the computers."  Here is the amazing Brautigan poem, first published in 1967, followed by an interesting trailer for the new series.

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace

   I'd like to think (and
   the sooner the better!)
   of a cybernetic meadow
   where mammals and computers
   live together in mutually
   programming harmony
   like pure water
   touching clear sky.

   I like to think
   (right now, please!)
   of a cybernetic forest
   filled with pines and electronics
   where deer stroll peacefully
   past computers
   as if they were flowers
   with spinning blossoms.

   I like to think
   (it has to be!)
   of a cybernetic ecology
   where we are free of our labors
   and joined back to nature,
   returned to our mammal brothers and sisters,
   and all watched over
   by machines of loving grace.

                    Richard Brautigan

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

I'm still busy recovering literally and psychologically from last week's reading and book launch for Past All Traps.  While I catch up, here are two haiku by Allen Ginsberg from "Four Haiku," which originally appeared in his Journals: Early Fifties Early Sixties:

I didn't know the names
of the flowers—now
my garden is gone.

Looking over my shoulder
my behind is covered
with cherry blossoms.




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



This week's feature poem comes from Lilliput Review #160, November 2007.  I myself walk through a city landscape every day, see exactly what is described in this poem everyday, and I didn't write this poem.

I'm so very glad Shawn Bowman did.

two wings per pigeon
and this is where they gather
on a wire
in the city
Ah, what do I know

Shawn Bowman

at my gate
the artless pigeon too
sings "It's spring!"

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,

Don

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t. kilgore splake: The Poet Tree

t. kilgore splake is a one of a kind, post-Beat, small press poet, with a romantic streak bigger than his beloved UP of Michigan and a body of work unrivaled by most of his contemporaries. You can set your clock by the deliberate, measured pacing of his free verse machinations and if you don't love the soul of this man, well, have I ever got some overpriced, upscale, academic poetry I'd like to pawn off on your dismally pretentious ass.

splake's poems are like missives, journal entries from a fading, too-soon-to-be-gone world. What he loves, what he wrestles with, who he is, is all there, right in the poems. As someone who came late to the "profession" (the first two definitions of that word say it all: "1 : the act of taking the vows of a religious community 2 : an act of openly declaring or publicly claiming a belief, faith, or opinion" i.), one of his major themes is his ongoing battle with "dame muse" or "damn dame muse." The declarative nature and gender of this theme are telling. His heroes are championed throughout his work: Richard Brautigan, Hemingway, Harrison, the Beats, Vonnegut, Bukowski ... the list is long and his admiration unflagging. Even his name - kilgore from Vonnegut, splake, as in a type "trout," a simultaneous tribute to Mr. V's great character and the trout swimming upriver from the Brautigan mythos, and the t., well, I'm not telling about that - is collage as homage. He is a great lover of the outdoors, a fisherman, an inveterate hiker of the nearby Cliffs, an excellent photographer, and a man of decided opinions.

Oh, and did I mention: he is a wonderful poet.

There have been many fine collections of his work throughout the years, including poetry, prose, and photography. He has been championed by many such as Jim Chandler of Thunder Sandwich, whose interview with the poet is a great place to start for the uninitiated. Though his work may not appeal to all and, if we are honest, whose would, those who are attracted to it grab tight and hold on.

It is with great pleasure that I received in the mail recently a beautiful little chapbook, published by Henry Denander's Kamini Press of Stockholm, entitled The Poet Tree and Other Poems. Though splake writes well in longer forms of 1, 2, and more pages, this tiny little volume concentrates on one of his greatest assets: the short poem, 15 or so lines or less. Here is the opening salvo:

divinity

red thimbleberries
like Jesus' blood
chartres stained glass

In 3 short lines is captured quite a bit of what splake is about: the beauty, and his fascination with, nature, a drop or two of sacrilege, and an all pervasive appreciation of art.

No mean feat, as it took Proust 7 lengthy volumes and over 1.5 million words to capture what Splake sketches in a telling 9 words.

He can capture himself, too, with a stark honesty, in this poem putting the photographer's precise eye to fine effect:

coming into spring

young pretty girl
espresso and laptop
conglomerate café morning
window table voyeur
while bears still sleeping
somewhere under snow

Here the element of nature is transmuted into an almost haiku like epiphany. Like his old friend and fellow poet, Albert Huffstickler, splake has a thing about coffee shops, often chronicling them in his verse. Spring, by the way, is a big, if brief, thing in its coming to the UP.

There are ups and downs in his work, emotional swings of elation and depression, characteristic of many an artist. One of the ways the poet has chosen to deal is to go head on and wrestle the angel:

cojones time

"sunlight here i am"
bukowski

muse long gone
blank page contests
past distant memories
destiny in hand
hot chivas rush
bardic blood boiling
brain skull cavity
distant grey fog
dull hum-hum-humming
.357 ticket to ride
spared nursing home
score tied
overtime eternity

Like Ginsberg & other Beats before and after him, splake chooses to shed all articles in a rush to catch the rhythm of meaning, the click-clack sound of spirit riding, riding, straight into the midnight heart of It All. Yes, there is darkness and there is much light, there is the ultimate beauty of life and what is.

Norbert Blei, at poetry dispatch and other notes from the underground, did an excellent recent post on splake, replete with poem and an essay by the poet on what exactly "the poet tree" is. To tempt you over to this essay, here is a picture I lifted from there:

You can get a nice signed edition of this beautiful little chapbook with over 30 of splake's finest poems for a mere $9 from Henry Denander at Kamini Press. I highly recommend it.

Of course, I'm biased. The poet and I have corresponded for nearly 20 years, him sending me envelopes full of xeroxed articles of books of interests and poems, his and others, I sending back and commiserating over the collective doom of his much-loved Cubbies and my much maligned Buccos. Yes, baseball is another shared romance of a bygone era, two old fools on a virtual park bench lamenting the way it was.

And my bias goes beyond this epistolary friendship of the non-electronic variety. My friend has honored what I do, if only by association: imagine my true and happy surprise to read this, the title poem of his collection, for the first time in this chap:

poet tree

denander drawings
lilliput poems
tibetan prayer flag colors
suffering autumn storms
vanishing in winter blizzards
buried until spring
to be born again

Of course, it is possible that lilliput is just a modifier here, signaling the diminutive nature of the poems on the tree and in this collection and has nothing to do with Lilliput the magazine (4 splake poems from previous posts) at all. But I'd like to think differently, especially since it was italicized (of course, there is that other Lilliput) and knowing how splake love's to refer to the things he enjoys.

Yes, I believe I'll think otherwise, mistaken or not.


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


This week's featured broadside is the beautiful Selected Wu Songs by Linda Joan Zeiser, published as Lilliput Review #108. Here's a delightful taste of that beauty as spring rapidly approaches:

The tulip path is covered now
with reds and pinks and whites and blues.
2,000 petals hold my heart
in a perfumed ritual that has no end.

Linda Joan Zeiser

And, for context, one more:




How many stars have fled the night,
how many seas have parted?
Within the soft contours of her,
no other questions matter!

Linda Joan Zeiser

And with many lifetimes collective wisdom, Master Issa:

once again
I've managed not to die...
blossoming spring

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

Richard Brautigan: Two Poems

Today is the anniversary of the birthday of one of the most original, reviled, inventive, maligned, loving, oft summarily dismissed, American poets of, well, all time: Richard Brautigan. Here are two poems from his late volume, June 30th, June 30th, a poetic journal of his first trip to Japan.

Japan

Japan begins and ends
----with Japan.

Nobody else knows the
----story.

. . . Japanese dust
in the Milky Way.

Tokyo
May 18, 1976

Homage to the Japanese Haiku Poet Issa

Drunk in a Japanese
----bar
----I'm
----OK

Tokyo
May 18, 1976

All these years later, we still miss you, Mister B.


And two birthday poems for Richard by Master Issa

paying no heed
to Buddha's birthday...
wildflowers



Buddha amid birthday flowers--
even the moon
deigns to rise

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

Issa's Birthday Song

Well, David Giacalone and Rebecca Bush sent along notes to remind me that Monday, June 15th, is the day Issa's Birthday is celebrated so I can't let that pass unnoticed.

at my dinner tray
a sparrow chirps...
spring rain

paying no heed
to Buddha's birthday...
wildflowers

deutzia blossoms, too
on Buddha's birthday
report for duty

Issa
translations by David Lanoue

Whenever I think of Issa, inevitably my thoughts move to sparrows, a bird that he just adored and I have to say his is an admiration I share. The house sparrows in our maple tree in the back yard have been raising holy hell of late and I just love it. We planted the tree not long after moving into the house 10 years or so ago and now I realize how very easy it is, indeed, to change the world.

This is Issa's birthday song ...

A few days ago, I was trying to help someone find a poem s/he couldn't remember the author or title of, all s/he could remember was some sensory impressions and that it was either by William Carlos Williams or Richard Brautigan (specifically The Pill Versus the Springhill Mining Disaster). Here's her/his description:

the only thing I remember is that it may have had something to do with a storm or disaster, and it tasted red and ashy. It was rather short as well and the final line was rather final.

Also, s/he remembered that it had been on the left hand page side. I felt from the last line that it was more likely to be Brautigan than Williams, so I went off to look through the Brautigan. I skimmed through the left sided poems but nothing. Than I realized that s/he had read it in one of those Brautigan omnibus editions and I thought the pagination might be different, so I skimmed the right sided poems. Nothing.

Well, not really nothing, because, though I didn't find the poem, I got totally rejazzed on Mr. B. I had reread The Pill last year and though I'd enjoyed it, it hadn't quite been the overwhelming experience I expected. Seems I must have been in some kind of funky snit because this time round I was delighted, cajoled, appalled, and all choked up in a fine mix of emotional falderol.

He had me at one, as the au currant saying goes.

Here's one by Mr. B. that grabbed me and that you don't see all over the net everyday:

To England

There are no postage stamps that send letters
back to England three centuries ago,
no postage stamps that make letters
travel back until the grave hasn't been dug yet,
and John Donne stands looking out the window,
it is just beginning to rain this April morning,
and the birds are falling into the trees
like chess pieces into an unplayed game,
and John Donne sees the postman coming up the street,
the postman walks very carefully because his cane
is made of glass.

Richard Brautigan

For those who might be interested, here's a link to a post I did for the library about how I became a reader. It explains a couple of my, er, eccentricities.

Lilliput Review #24, today's selection from the archives, comes from the distant land of September 1991, and is a broadside issue by one of today's best small press poets, Charlie Mehrhoff. He brings it big-time in a way today's household names rarely even dream of. Here's a taste:

with the dawn of fire

with the music
of the stone hammer

with the birth
of the ancient drum
hear now
hear now

creation

prophet of the godless landscape

he sends his voice
into the cold stones
at the river's bottom
there to awaken
in the springtime
pieces
of broken ice

The Raven

said to her
are you into scarification
baby

will you wear the leather mask
will you make me forget
the day of my birth
the eyes of the idol
the child of god
of rain

the impact of the poet:

one soul falling
backward

& she wants the whole world
delivered in a second

simple.
i give her bells,
tell her to wait.

Charlie Mehrhoff

the Buddha pretends
to be born...
bells and drums

Issa
translated by David Lanoue

One final note: did you Stravinsky today? I did.



best,
Don

A Pair of Nines (Plus): Richard Brautigan, Galway Kinnell, and the Lilliput Archive

Cover by Bobo

Tuesday just seems to swing around before you know it, so it's time to dip into the Lilliput Back Issue Archive. Before hitting that, let's thread some loose ends into a post-modern early Valentine and, oh, yeah, supply an update on all things (Lilliput) print and publishable.

I've begun printing up the new issues and stuffing contributor envelopes, a process that usually takes about two weeks. Following that, regular subscription copies of issues #'s 167 and 168 will begin shipping, that's about 3 weeks out. That process takes about 4 to 6 weeks on its own.

Simultaneously, I've received the Basho Haiku Challenge chapbook proof back from the proofer. The usual bonehead typos and logistic hiccups will be corrected and copies will begin to print up and probably ship sometime around March 1st (yeah, that's simultaneous with the above - don't ask). Stay tuned for further updates.

Meanwhile, back on the blog front, while checking out the work of Langston Hughes, Galway Kinnell and, Richard Brautigan, all who had birthdays over the past 5 days, I ran across a pair of nines I thought I'd share:

Nine Things

It's night
and a numbered beauty
lapses at the wind,
chortles with the
branches of a tree

-giggles

plays shadow dance
with a dead kite,
cajoles affection
from falling leaves,
and knows four
other things.
One is the color
of your hair.

Richard Brautigan

9

When one has lived a long time alone,
and the hermit thrush calls and there is an answer,
and the bullfrog head half out of water utters
the cantilliations he sang in his first spring,
and the snake lowers himself over the threshold
and creeps away over the stones, one sees
they all live to mate with their kind, and one knows,
after a long time of solitude, after the many steps
taken
away from one's kind, toward these other kingdoms,
the hard prayer inside one's own singing
is to come back, if one can, to one's own,
a world almost lost, in an exile that deepens,
when one has lived a long time alone.

Galway Kinnell

Because the Tuesday post usually has a few general lyrical news items, here's one to turn Valentine's day, um, inside out:






Two accounts relating the above "phenomenon" may be found here and here. Though the NYT's use of the above cover is salacious (spell check read this as "delicious"), Guardian UK nearly trumped it with a nice panel from the original "Night of the Living Dead." Truly, after Zombie Haiku Miss Jane could not be far behind.

Any day now, someone is going to officially declare the zombie revival (un)dead. My apologies; things have been a bit jumbled around here the last few weeks, so it seems perhaps I best leave my mixed up holidays right here. But a little humor goes a long way when untangling thread.

This week's back issue is Lilliput Review #53, from February 1994. This issue had an extra 8 pages, for a truly brobdingnagian total of 24. I believe I've mentioned before that the further back in time I go, the more removed I feel from the type of work I look for now. The magazine has been something of a life journey, a lyrical journal composed with the words of others. Who I was 15 years ago is at once distinctly different and fundamentally the same as who I am today. Perhaps even the selections I make from the work back then are tinted by the way I see things now. It's been a long strange, trip, as the poet Robert Hunter said. Next month will be the 20th anniversary of the publication of the 1st issue of Lillie and I guess that has me looking back, as well as forward. For now, let's dip in and see what was happening 15 years ago this month, on the short poem front, through the lens of a particular small press editor.




Doubt Robbing Perfect Faith

in the woods

a caterpillar covering itself
with the scales of a lizard.

Vogn

-----/ self serving /
like a simile

Tolek

zapruder moment

---------------the
---------------heart
rears back,
---------------spraying
---------------pink
---------------sawdust.

-----------Joy Sawyer

Gum

everywhere in
the pink dress,
her body snaps

Chad Buser

Pissing and trembling -
laugh at me crickets

Issa

Separation(s)
---with apologies to Issa

After dinner,
empty wine bottles stand in judgment.
I relieve myself from your porch
and fall ass-backwards
over the moon.

Richard D. Houff

the water so smooth the moon touched it
like a face
touches a mirror

Thomas Wiloch

1565.

shaved the poet
in half-moon
with words of broken ice.

Guy R. Beining

Since this was such a large issue and the selection above comes from only the first half, I'll revisit #55 next week for the second half.

One final side note of interest: this was Issa's first appearance in a Lilliput publication.


best,
Don

Richard Brautigan: A Galilee Hitchhiker

Well Worn Back Cover

Today is Richard Brautigan's birthday and he is a sentimental favorite around here, as many of you know. I thought to celebrate, I'd highlight some poems from his collection Rommel Drives On Deep Into Egypt.

It appears that I've already posted "Feasting and Drinking Went on Far into the Night," not once but twice, so I'll just give you the link and leave sparing the redundancy up to you (of course reading a good poem over and over, in this case spaced months apart, is highly recommended, as you'll find it's changed - or was that you?). Let's see what else I can roust up:

Shellfish

Always spend a penny
as if you were spending
-----dollar
and always spend a dollar
as if you were spending
a wounded eagle and always
spend a wounded eagle as if
you were spending the very
-----sky itself.






A Lyrical Want, an Endocrine Gland Fantasy

A lyrical want, an endocrine gland fantasy,
a telescope that I thought had no thorns
have lead me to a pain that I cannot pronounce.
It gathers around me like a convention of translators
for a language that does not exist with all those meetings
-----to attend.







All Secrets of Past Tense Have Just Come My Way

All secrets of past tense have just come my way,
but I still don't know what I'm going to do
----next.







Snow Makes Me Sad

Flying East today first to Chicago,
then North Carolina snow makes me sad
below in the mountains of the West.
It is a white sadness that rises
from California, Nevada, Utah
and Colorado to visit the airplane,
to sit here beside me like a snowy 1943
-----map of my childhood.






At first, it was Mr. B's playfulness with a medium that was always so Serious that appealed to the flower generation (Auden and Lowell in the rear view, by the side of the road, each with a battered bag and a bemused expression), followed so very closely by his sadness. And, yes, tragedy.

Messy, indeed.

It is that sadness that lingers for those of us who loved him. Still it is the subtle blend of whimsy, sadness, and, yes, seriousness (for can there be sadness without the serious) that made him truly great.

What say we swing on back and pick up those those two old geezers, lonely, sad, serious and, if truth be told, even a bit playful, shuffling along there, by the side of the road?

Nice to see you smiling, Mr. B.


best,
Don

Brautigan's Near Perfect Book of Poetry: The Pill Versus the Springhill Mining Disaster

Richard Brautigan's The Pill Versus the Springhill Mining Disaster is probably his most read collection of poems and has been reader selected for the Near Perfect Books of Poetry list. It also appears to be the only volume of his poems, with the exception of his early fifties writings The Edna Webster Collection of Undiscovered Writings (which contains some poetry) to still be in print. The Pill may be found in the omnibus volume Richard Brautigan's Trout Fishing in America, The Pill versus The Springhill Mine Disaster, and In Watermelon Sugar. However, most of his poetry may currently be found on line at richardbrautigan.net.

The Pill ... is subtitled "the selected poems 1957-1968 of Richard Brautigan" and collects previously published small press collections of his work. Here's the description from richardbrautigan.net:

In addition to thirty eight previously uncollected poems, The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster included The Return of the Rivers (May 1957), all nine parts of The Galilee Hitch-Hiker (1958), nine poems from the Lay The Marble Tea (1959), seventeen poems from The Octopus Frontier (1960), and all thirty two poems from All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (1967).

Coupled with In Watermelon Sugar and Trout Fishing in America this is the one volume of Brautigan to get if there is only room for one on your shelf (or in your budget). A number of the poems in The Pill ... regularly show up around the net, which is testimony to the enduring quality of work that is sometimes viewed as whimsical and representative of a bygone era. They strike, however, a very deep emotional vein and have a universal appeal that speaks especially well to non-readers of poetry. Admittedly, they are not everyone's cup of meat; a great deal of his work does, however, resonate with me. Here's a taste:

The Beautiful Poem

I go to bed in Los Angeles thinking
---about you.

Pissing a few moments ago
I looked down at my penis
---affectionately.

Knowing it has been inside
you twice today makes me
---feel beautiful.

Private Eye Lettuce

Three crates of Private Eye Lettuce
the name and drawing of a detective
with magnifying glass on the sides
of the crates of lettuce,
form a great cross in man's imagination
and his desire to name
the objects of the world.
I think I'll call this place Golgotha
and have some salad for dinner.

Haiku Ambulance

A piece of green pepper
--fell
off the wooden salad bowl:
--so what?

A Baseball Game
---Part 7

Baudelaire went
to a baseball game
and bought a hot dog
and lit up a pipe
of opium.
The New York Yankees
were playing
the Detroit Tigers.
In the 4th inning
an angel committed
suicide by jumping
off a low cloud.
The angel landed
on second base,
causing the
whole infield
to crack like
a mirror.
The game
was called on
account of
fear.

So, what's so great about these poems? For me, with the possible exception of "Haiku Ambulance" (and I'd argue even for that), they balance a lightness of tone with a seriousness of subject that defies comparison. Of course, they are funny; when the laughter ends, though, the reader is left to wonder exactly what s/he was laughing at (or with). As an editor, I can tell you that people are still writing in the style of "A Baseball Game, Part 7" 40 years later. In fact, if there is any style that might be said to truly define the small press (as opposed to the so-called university"small" press), this is it. I get them submitted to Lilliput by the boatloads, have for the 20 years I've been doing this. Of course, there is one minor drawback.

Nobody, but nobody, writes this style of poem this well. It's like watching a trapeze artist - they don't call them artists for nothing - like watching somebody walk a high wire between two skyscrapers in a brisk breeze. Somehow you know they'll never fall, but everyone shouldn't even try.

In addition, the fact of the matter is I love baseball and it is precisely this consuming passion that makes me detest baseball poems. I can't abide them. I have a huge blind spot when it comes to them. I have to turn away. I'm at once embarrassed and repelled. What can I say?

Well, what I can say is I love this baseball poem, unashamedly, unabashedly, I love this poem.

'Nuff said.

Is "Private Eye Lettuce" really about the human science of naming, of the need for language and classification? The power of a single word is demonstrated here, turning a humorous poem dead serious, and then back again.

What kind of dressing you want with that salad, bub?

And, yeah, it's 40 years later and when's the last time you heard a man say he felt beautiful? Squeezed into a poem of a mere 24 words which also happens to contain the word penis, a word a poem rarely, if at all, contained back in the soon-to-banished uptight day.

It certainly could be argued that Brautigan himself was a victim of the transition from those up-tight days to an unimagined freedom, as were Plath and Sexton. But I won't argue it here. It all is simply what it is. Beautiful.

Beautiful poetry.

By a beautiful man who knew he was.

How about that, hey, bub?

best,

Don

Albert Huffstickler, Richard Brautigan, and Franz Wright

For fans of Albert Huffstickler, here's a treat courtesy of the always excellent Outlaw Poetry site. His poem The Way of Art, in English and French, along with a nice biographical overview of his career, which, like all good biographical pieces, captures most of the important details and misses all the magic.

Which is why they included the poem. Do spend some time over at Outlaw Poetry and Free Jazz Network. You won't be disappointed.

Here's a great take by Mickey Hess on Richard Brautigan's Sombrero Fallout: a Japanese Novel for his "A Year in Reading" project. Since we're on the subject of IUH favorite Brautigan, how about a little something that has that year end kind of feel:



Feasting and Drinking Went on Far into the Night

Feasting and drinking went on far into the night
but in the end we went home alone to console ourselves
which seems to be what so many things are all about
like the branches of a tree just after the wind
-----stops blowing.

Richard Brautigan

Finally, here's a beauty by Franz Wright entitled The Only Animal.

Brautigan, Dylan, and Ginsberg (Twice)

A couple of quick notes to start the week:

Here's a marvelous appreciation of Richard Brautigan by Justin Taylor at Lost Magazine.

Take a look at Allen Ginsberg's annotated copy of Eliot's The Waste Land.




Take a listen to two mp3's (at the bottom of the post): one of Bob Dylan and Allen Ginsberg performing "Vomit Blues" and Dylan and the Band performing "See You Later, Allen Ginsberg" from Sweetheart of the Radio.

Happy Monday.


best,
Don

The Sunday Poem: Early Richard Brautigan

Here's Richard Brautigan's title poem from The Galilee Hitchhiker:

The Galilee Hitchhiker, Part I

Baudelaire was
driving a Model A
across Galilee.
He picked up a
hitch-hiker named
Jesus who had
been standing among
a school of fish
feeding them
pieces of bread.
"Where are you
going?" asked
Jesus, getting
into the front
seat.
"Anywhere, anywhere
out of this world!"
shouted
Baudelaire.
"I'll go with you
as far as
Golgotha,"
said Jesus.
"I have a
concession
at the carnival
there, and
I must be
late."

Richard Brautigan

Consider your Sunday obligations fulfilled.


best,
Don

Richard Brautigan: Complicated Banking Problem

Here's a short story/flash fiction piece by Richard Brautigan, entitled "Complicated Banking Problem." The young woman who reads it does a great job, though she is forced to look off center a bit too much (get that copy closer to the camera, folks!).

God, could we use Brautigan today ...

Hope you enjoy it.


best,
Don

The Turning Year, WCW, & a Free 6 Issue Subscription to Lilliput Review

The first batch of new issues for subscibers went out this week and I am hopeful that the rest will follow over the next few weeks. Also announced is the publication of chapbook Number 19 in the Modest Proposal series, entitled The Turning Year: Japanese Nature Poems, translated by Dennis Maloney and Hide Oshiro.

The Turning Year is a companion volume to Unending Night: Japanese Love Poems, both of which are drawn from the classic 100 Poems by 100 Poets (Hyakunin Isshu). Both of these collections take a unique subject approach to a Japanese poetic classic and allow the reader to contemplate both the individual poems and their cultural milieu from distinctly unique perspectives. Those familiar with Dennis's translations of Yosano Akiko and others, both from this blog and as published in Lilliput Review, know that he stays true to the original while bridging the gaps from both classical and modern Japanese to modern English. His smooth, imagistic style is at once lyrical and economic, admirable qualities perfectly suited to the source material. Along with Hide Oshiro, they have put together a fine collection of nature poems that should entice anyone with even a casual interest in Eastern verse. Here are a few examples:

Beyond sight my thoughts
turn to Kasuga temple
near my home
where above Mt. Mikasa
the same moon shines.

Abe-no Nakamaro

At this place along the road,
the known and unknown
come and go,
meet and part again,
passing through the Osaka gate.

Semimaru

On this sudden trip to Takuke shrine
I bring no prayer offering;
God of the mountain path
please accept the brocade
of maple leaves surrounding us.

Kwanke

The Turning Year is a 19 page chapbook and sells for $3.00, postpaid. In a web-only publication launch, I'm offering the two volumes, The Turning Year and Unending Night, for $5.00 postpaid. For further information, email me at "lilliput review at gmail dot com".

In poetry info this week, it is Anne Sexton's birthday. She is a modern American favorite of mine and here she is reading her poem "Her Kind." This week the Best American Poetry Blog featured a posting on another personal favorite, Richard Brautigan. I'm not sure I agree with their contention that his poetry was not successful in his lifetime; I can't think of too many poets at the time who were more read than Brautigan but hey, maybe, all those funny mood altering whatzits beclouded me already fuzzy noggin. In any case, the posting reprints his "Your Catfish Friend," which seems to be hands down one of his most popular poems circa Internet 2008.

In small press news, a place called "The Shop" is featuring Vox Audio for sale, which includes readings by small press giants Todd Moore and Albert Huffstickler. I'm curious about the Huff reading, which is listed as taking place in Austin and Bisbee, Arizona. If anybody knows anything about this one, drop me a line. Another poetic favorite, Miriam Sagan, was recently interviewed by Patricia Prime for Haibun Today. Miriam has published frequently in Lilliput and is the author of The Future Tense of Ash, another Modest Proposal Chapbook. Congratulations are in order for Alan Catlin, whose book Effects of Sunlight in the Fog, is number 20 on the Small Press Distribution Poetry Bestseller list, eking out the fashionably happening Tao Lin.

Finally in poetic news, William Carlos Williams' granddaughter has put out and appeal for folks to vote for WCW for the New Jersey Hall of Fame. Bruce is in already, so maybe it's time for someone a tad more lyrical. Williams is listed under the general category (Walt Whitman is listed under history - I'm wondering if there isn't going to be some nasty vote splitting there). You don't have to be politically minded or even from Jersey to vote and though they ask for your name, you can always dust off your old nom de plume if need be. Nobody is checking. If you are strategizing, you may want to tone down the Abbott and Costello vote - only two folks get in across all the categories so if you vote for other famous folks ... well, you get the idea.

Art by Bobo

This week's tour of the Lillie archive brings us to issue #67 from April 1995. Ah, that simpler time of the Contract of America, the Oklahoma City bombing, and the seemingly ubiquitous Unabomber. Ya know, come to think of it, the 90's had a kind of 80's feel without all that hair. Here's what was happening in this little world of the short poem.



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

old fishing village
-----caught
---------in morning mist

Patrick Sweeney

A Woman

A woman standing
under the pier with her
back to me, staring
out at the ocean.

The water that slides
up the beachface stops
at her feet. I fall
in love every day.

Andy Fogle

One Idea

The music of the night
Calls me to come out
Where insect voices sing
Of universal peace
And annihilation as one idea.

B. Kim Meyer

Rage

The rope that ties
its own knots.

H. Edgar Hix

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



Finally, here is Brobdingnag Feature Poem #27 by Mark Sonnenfeld. I'll give a free 6 issue subscription to Lilliput (or a 6 issue extension to your current subscription) to the first person who can tell me what he's talking about:

lawrence, KS

what I think about
sometimes
is old bridgeboards
revving car engines
that drag-race their dust
to the rivers
eerie current
with all the mud + sand
so high as now this river is
nearby
a church
organist plays the daytime
workmen listening
from then her window
in the land ladys
rooming house sometime
the boards pop
at night
a part of her
left alone walking
the old deserted pavilion
she is drawn

Mark Sonnenfeld

For those who are not all that familiar with Lillie, the magazine features short poems, ten lines and under. Very occasionally, I will publish something longer under the heading Brobdingnag Feature poem. Hence, the above.

And, oh yeah, I do know what he's talking about ...

best,
Don

Taciturn Noir for a Sunday Afternoon, by Richard Brautigan

Taciturn Noir for a Sunday Afternoon:

The Scarlatti Tilt by Richard Brautigan





from the novel, The Revenge of the Lawn

I guess this one needs to be nominated for the flash fiction hall of fame, the classic category.

best,
Don

Masaoka Shiki and the World When You Were Looking the Other Way

This past week at the library, I picked up and read Selected Poems by Masaoka Shiki. Shiki is one of the 4 cornerstone's of classic haiku (aka one of the 4 master poets), the others being Basho, Issa, and Buson. In the past, I've enjoyed Shiki's work in anthologies but had not run across a collection I was enticed by until this one, so I thought I'd give it a try. This collection is translated by the always fine purveyor of Eastern literature Burton Watson.

Shiki is the most recent of the big four haikuists, born in 1867 and dying in 1902. In his succinct introduction, Watson sketches out the life, the work, and its historical importance without ever deviating into the academic. As some folks may know, haiku (or hokku) was originally the first verse of the longer renga form. According to Watson, what Shiki did

"... first of all was to establish the haiku as completely separate from the renga, a poetic form fully capable of standing on its own. To emphasize this step he rejected the older term hokku, as well as haikai, another term by which the form was known in earlier times, and replaced them with the designation haiku.

It was thought that 17 syllables was to0 brief a form to be considered seriously, but Shiki maintained and went on to prove that its very brevity was its strength. Though haiku up to this time was generally thought to be the first verse of the linked renga form, of course Basho, Buson, and Issa had used it independently and helped establish its individual predominance. Shiki helped to codify its importance and almost single-handedly revived haiku, which has since become one of the world's most predominant forms. We have Shiki to thank for this reformation and the resultant burgeoning of haiku.

One of the things I found most appealing about Shiki's own work is that he, for the most part, rejected literary allusions, puns, and wordplay, as Watson points out. Some of the cultural difficulty that I experienced in the work of Basho falls away as a result and, so, in my view, the work overall connects more easily for modern, non-Japanese readers. This is not to say I like Shiki better than Basho per se, just that his work is on the whole more accessible.

Watson translates Shiki's work in three forms: haiku, tanka, and kanshi. Watson translates 144 of the over 20,000 haiku he wrote. I marked 16 down of special interest and found enough that grabbed me that I will seek out other collections (there must be others worth reading of the 19,800 plus that Watson didn't translate). 2 of the 33 tanka he translated were enjoyable and I didn't connect with any of the 4 kanshi, though they all had things to recommend them. Here's a brief selection from the 16 haiku.


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


A carp leaps up,
crinkling
the autumn moonlight

Poppies open,
and the same day
shatter in the wind

To ears
muddied with sermons,
a cuckoo

After I squashed
the spider -
lonely night chill

For me, who go,
for you, who stay behind -
two autumns

Year-end housecleaning -
gods and buddhas
sitting out on the grass

Working All Day and into the Night to Clear Out My Haiku Box

I checked
three thousand haiku
on two persimmons

Crickets -
in the corner of the garden
where we buried the dog

They've cut down the willow -
the kingfishers
don't come anymore

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


Also this week, there are lots of tidbits of interest, gathered from here and there. Here's a poem from Albert Huffstickler, from somewhere that no doubt would have bemused him.

As noted recently by Ron Silliman, The Outlaw Book of American Poetry is on google books almost in its entirety. In my capacity as a standard mucky-muck at my place of employment, I have to note that a ton of google book previews seem to contain nearly the entire book, with a few pages blocked here and there. Amazing, scary, and exhilaritating all at once. One way to kick that Robitussin jones, I guess.

At The Ultra-Mundane, a gentlemen by the name of R. Alan is reading In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan, chapter by chapter. I haven't gotten used to his voice, but here it is if you'd like to give it a try.

Here's an extended take on Thomas Hardy's early novel Under the Greenwood Tree that I put together for a post at my day job for those so inclined. Regular readers of The Hut will remember I briefly mentioned when I was reading this in a previous post.

Courtesy of Poetry and Poets in Rags here is a timely posting of "Let America Be America Again" by Langston Hughes at World Changing. Powerful as well as timely.

Mary Karr's Poet's Choice column this week has a very resonant poem on dying sparrows by Brenda Hillman entitled "Partita for Sparrows." I haven't connected as often with Karr as with her predecessors at the Poet's Choice column, but I'm warming to her and think she's found a diamond (or, at least, a shiny, tinsely thing to start a nest with) in the post-modern poetry rough with this one.

This week's sampling of poems from Lilliput Review comes from #68 (replete with the nifty title "Geomorphology for Poets" - what was I thinking, you may ask), from April 1995. Enjoy.

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


Cabin

Sleet,
winter's intricate crystal calculus

Earl Grey tea. Good fire in the stove

Out-of-season fly
lights on poster of the Milky Way.

Mark Blaeuer

Tel Aviv

They are sitting next to each other
at the bus stop.
The old woman who in Germany
was 897876421
and the young girl with a blue butterfly
on her bare shoulder.

We are witnesses, my daughter and I.

Karen Alkalay-Gut

At the Hoh River

The river slides by like a column of bells.
Our marriage is now a week old.
You smile and ask me to guess
in which hand you hide the moon!

Scott King

from the mountaintop

if a monday evening
drive home from work
in traffic is no
place for a sudden
illumination
then,
fuck you,
neither is this place.

Andrew Urbanus

Senryu

----even -if all the others
are running, if you walk to heaven
----you'll still be there in time.

Harland Ristau

¶ and the homeless, the truly homeless
-are we
-who separate ourselves
-from the rest of it
-w/ walls

scarecrow

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The new issues, #'s 165 and 166, should begin shipping in about a week. Also, a new Modest Proposal Chapbook, #19, entitled The Turning Year: Japanese Nature Poems, translated by Dennis Maloney and Hide Oshiro from 100 Poems by 100 Poets, and a companion volume to Unending Night, will be forthcoming very soon.

best,
Don

How to Read a Poem (& Why)

Cover by Gustave Doré

In just under two weeks, I will be conducting a poetry appreciation class, entitled "How to Read a Poem (& Why)" (not a very original title, but to the point, and a tad better than last year's "Poetry: Mystery and Magic") for a local lifelong learning program. This will be followed a week after with the first meeting of a new poetry discussion group at the library, called "3 Poems By..., which will focus on 3 representative poems by one particular poet, this time round Emily Dickinson. And a week after that, I'll be speaking to a class at the library and information service school on topics a tad arcane for general interest.

After that, my calendar is relatively free for the next 49 or so weeks.

I've mentioned the poetry appreciation class in passing previously and a number of folks asked me to elaborate, so here goes. The class consists of a general introductory "lecture" wherein I prat on for 40 or so minutes about essentially what poetry means to me and why it is important in people's lives, even folks who only encounter it a handful of times in their lives. Two basic texts that I found very helpful in preparing are both entitled "How to Read a Poem", one by Molly Peacock and the other by Edward Hirsch. They help a great deal with the how part of the program and Peacock is also very strong with the why. I use a few poems to illustrate some points in the introduction and open the lecture with James Wright's The Jewel. This year I'm going to try and tuck in some Issa haikus based on Robert Hass's reading and may also use Billy Collins's poem Introduction to Poetry to illustrate how not to read a poem. I heavily stress that poetry is not about answers, it's about questions, usually the big ones, to which there are no pat answers, hence the frequent refrain "oh, poetry, yeah, it's great, but I just don't get it." The great poems are a constant rephrasing of the big questions. As the great haiku critic, R. H. Blyth, said: "Poetry is never in the answers but in the questions - or rather between question and answer, between the known and unknown." I try to reassure everyone by hammering this home a number of ways and then follow with a single sheet handout of tips on how to read a poem.

Then we'll just plunge into the poetry.

I've prepared 10 or 11 poems for discussion and base what I do on the tried and true method of book discussion groups: I prepare between 5 to 10 open-ended questions based on each individual poem and use some of these to get the discussion going. Once the ice is broken, I simply guide the discussion of each work to help elucidate and provide clarity.

Since this is my second year doing this program and there is a slim possibility that there might be one or two folks in the class that where in it last year, I'm thinking, based on Elvis Costello's tour of a few years back (the one when he brought out a spinning wheel with 70 or so songs from his catalog and spun it on stage to create the evening's set), I may let the class choose which poems to do. Previously, I had a prepared order because I chose some poems with shared themes and imagery (in Auden's case borrowed imagery, in the kindest sense of the word). I'll have to see how that goes. I also have some video and audio to break up the monotony of me and that seems to go over well with the older crowd.

Here are the poems:

• Wild Geese by Mary Oliver
• Never Again Will Birds' Song Be the The Same by Robert Frost
• Donal Og, an anonymous Irish ballad, translated by Lady Gregory
• Funeral Blues by W. H. Auden
• For You by Ted Kooser
• Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare
• Sonnet 130 by William Shakespeare
  
• A Certain Slant of Light by Emily Dickinson
• Let Evening Come by Jane Kenyon
• Filling Station by Elizabeth Bishop
• maggie and milly and molly and may by e. e. cummings

Some of these poems have subtle relationships (the first two), others more direct (the next 3, plus the last of that group of three and the next poem), the next two subtle again (with the Kenyon harking back to the 2nd group) and finally two unrelated individual poems. If past experience is any measure, we'll get through 4 or 5 poems. If I was to do them in order, and I still may, this would probably be the order I would do them in. I have video for the Frost (Voices and Visions), Donal Og (in John Huston's excellent film adaptation of James Joyce's story The Dead), and the Auden (Four Weddings and a Funeral) and audio for the Bishop. There is audio available for some of the others but it just doesn't have the "sparkle" that video brings; the Bishop I love, however, since she laughs at her own poem while reading it.

Here is the recitation of Donal Og from The Dead, to give you a taste:





Yesterday, I did a brief post for the birthdays of William Carlos Williams and Ken Kesey and a friend, WF, from across the pond sent this little poem by Richard Brautigan, a Issa's Untidy Hut regular, concerning WCW's birthday (or maybe not):


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

"September 3 (The William Carlos Williams Mistake"
I had severe insomnia last night with
the past, the present, and the future detailing
----themselves
like: Oh, the shit we run through our minds!
Then I remembered it was Dr. William Carlos
Williams' birthday and that made me feel better
-----until almost dawn.


---------Note:

---------September 3rd is not
---------Dr. William Carlos Williams
---------birthday. It is the birthday
---------of a girlfriend.
---------Dr. William Carlos Williams
---------was born on September 17th, 1883.

---------An interesting mistake.

Richard Brautigan

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

-
Hmn, it's amazing how this man's mind worked and how he found poetry in the most minute things.

I'm happy to report that I've received over 100 haiku for the Basho Haiku Challenge. The great response has sparked still more manic ideas on my part, so keep the haiku coming and pass the word on to friends. More about the manic ideas later.

This week's smash from the past is Lilliput Review #77, from March 1996. Hope something grabs you here.



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


Zen American Style
If you don't want
to hear
anymore talk
about the void

then say hello
to the trojan horse

Mark Hartenbach

Landlocked
You can't drive the seagulls
away by pointing
toward the horizon

Tom Riley

insatiability rewinds old sorrow and records lust over it

Sheila E. Murphy

from poems for Leecia written when she was little
-----------------If in sleep
-----------------beside you
-----------------I should
-----------------murmur
-----------------"Shiva" --
-----------------will you answer
-----------------with just "Mama --
-----------------go to sleep now?"

-----------------Sylvia Manning

the saddest lines
are hunting
joy in every island

Richard Alan Bunch

f-----------------

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

till next time,
Don