Old Pajamas: Biting The Buddha - Small Press Friday

Having previously reviewed Drenched Through at Old Age, by old pajamas, I've gone back to the well again to an earlier collection by him, entitled Biting the Buddha. Published by Blue Cottage press in 2000 ...

There is a noticeable difference in approach and style in this older volume; the newer book has no punctuation and an assured use of the monostich (there are none of the later in Biting the Buddha). Still, let's not get our knickers in a twist, eh - it is the message and the talent that should be in the forefront and so it will be in this overview.

From my lips rises the full moon
To stare at her white belly.

The mystery: origin, essence, and epicenter: the lips, the moon, the belly.

Enveloped so
        Inside me
The sudden rain
        Does not cool him.

Again, a mystery, this time one of identity, ego, and presence.

         In the air
A junkie's drawing...starved limbs
         Petals falling.

 
A lyrical little dirge, capturing at once the sadness and beauty of a life 'squandered,' and the rhyming echo.

Autumn gust,
Still leaves
          Scatter again.

This poem turns on the first word of line two: 'Still.'  To me, this feels like two contiguous moments, passing quickly.

How sweet the grass!
How calm a place
To lay skin and bone!

 
This resonates with philosophical beauty, dealing as it does with life and death and more, and a literalness that says it all, says it all ...

Dust rises
Restless in a dried field,
Shifting
             Foot to foot.

Ashes to ashes - there is a biblical quality, a mythic quality, a folklorish quality to what, in essence, is a simple observation, couple with a human echo that has its own chilling quality. A sister poem to "How sweet the grass," certainly.

Crushed by the wheel
The fox looks back.

 
There is more to this little two-line 'short-story' than meets the eye, eh, Mr. Fox?

The tide gone out,
I am left behind.

Oh, maggie and milly and molly and may ... the ocean dwarfs us all with dimension and perpective and loneness. So much cosmic detritus, so little time. 

  Across the marsh
All life flies on the wind
  Of a New Year.

There is a big picture perspective here; strangely enough my first free associative thought is of the first picture of the earth from space. 

Oh, there it is!

Biting the Buddha may be purchased directly from the author for $5, which covers the cost of the mailer, the postage and the book. Contact him at <blue cottage 2000 AT yahoo DOT com>, no spaces, and read AT for @ and DOT for . in order to avoid those pesky harvesting bots.

------

US Postal Service Stamp Commemorating 100 Years of Cherry Blossoms

in cherry blossom shade
there are even those
who hate this world

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,

Don

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Letters of Note: Norman Maclean

From Letters of Note

I stumbled across the letter below by Norman Maclean, as well as the one pictured above, on the wonderful Letters of Note blog.  As an editor (as well as poet), I can directly relate to the pain of rejection because it is the stuff I deal in everyday, like it or not.  I believe an editor, especially with poetry, should be as supportive as she can be.  Reading what happened to Mr. Maclean and his, in my estimation, "measured response," brought the pure, heartfelt joy only a certain type of non-violent revenge may bring.

Yes, fellow poets and writers, this one's for you:

Dear Mr. Elliott:

I have discovered that I have been writing you under false pretenses, although stealing from myself more than from you. I have stolen from myself the opportunity of seeing the dream of every rejected author come true.

The dream of every rejected author must be to see, like sugar plums dancing in his head, please-can't-we-see-your-next-manuscript letters standing in piles on his desk, all coming from publishing companies that rejected his previous manuscript, especially from the more pompous of the fatted cows grazing contentedly in the publishing field. I am sure that, under the influence of those dreams, some of the finest fuck-you prose in the English language has been composed but, alas, never published. And to think that the rare moment in history came to me when I could in actuality have written the prose masterpiece for all rejected authors – and I didn't even see that history had swung wide its doors to me.

You must have known that Alfred A. Knopf turned down my first collection of stories after playing games with it, or at least the game of cat's-paw, now rolling it over and saying they were going to publish it and then rolling it on its back when the president of the company announced it wouldn't sell. So I can't understand how you could ask if I'd submit my second manuscript to Alfred A. Knopf, unless you don't know my race of people. And I can't understand how it didn't register on me – 'Alfred A. Knopf' is clear enough on your stationery.

But, although I let the big moment elude me, it has given rise to little pleasures. For instance, whenever I receive a statement of the sales of 'A River Runs Through It' from the University of Chicago Press, I see that someone has written across the bottom of it, 'Hurrah for Alfred A. Knopf.' However, having let the great moment slip by unrecognized and unadorned, I can now only weakly say this: if the situation ever arose when Alfred A. Knopf was the only publishing house remaining in the world and I was the sole remaining author, that would mark the end of the world of books.

Very sincerely,

Norman Maclean

Of course, the first, rejected book was A River Runs Through It, a hugely popular collection of Maclean's work published by the University of Chicago and later made into a popular motion picture. 

Another fine form of revenge of a similar ilk is E. E. Cummings' famed rejection dedication to his aptly titled volume, No Thanks. 

(Source: Francis Burr, via Al Pinetree; Image: Norman Maclean in 1970 by Leslie Strauss Travis, via.)

don't go geese!
everywhere it's a floating world
of sorrow

     Issa
     translated by David G. Lanoue

And David's alternate translation, in, as he says, more contemporary language:






don't go, geese!
the world sucks
everywhere

     Issa    
     translated by David G. Lanoue






best,
Don

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W. H. Auden & Nina Simone

This past Saturday, February 21st, was the shared birthdays of W. H. Auden and Nina Simone. Auden was never a man of too few words; this poem, however, has the power of his longer works with an unaccustomed conciseness.

Epitaph On A Tyrant

Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter;
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.

W. H. Auden

Which calls to mind, for me, E. E. Cummings's

a politician is an arse upon
which everyone has sat except a man

There is a kinship here of a bygone era and yet the subject transcends all culture and time.

Also, here is an Auden poem from the 1936 film titled "Night Mail." A minor sub-genre of poetry, the mail is something that habitually creeps into the work of most poets, who are typically awaiting news of a manuscript or proof copies of a new book. In "Night Mail, Auden universalizes this obsession of writers everywhere. Oddly, the recitation of the main verses in the film, in an attempt to replicate the motion of the train carrying the night mail, comes off as a sort of stiff upper lip rap, many decades before its time.

When it comes to trains, give me John Lee Hooker anyday. When it comes to the mail, Auden, however, has the inside track:





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

And then there is Nina Simone, who knew how to give a different sort of look at sinnermen. Tt's all about the power, despite the static slide show presentation (lovely as the individual images may be). Just close your eyes and sway ... and, if you are work, make sure the cat is belled.





Finally, here is a 30 minute documentary entitled "Nina Simone." A wonderful snippet of her singing Kurt Weill, whose work I coincidentally spent some time listening to this weekend, is a great moment, among quite a few others. The sound is not up to modern standards and this is a warts and all production, as she notes herself, but well with a glimpse of an artist coming to terms with herself and the world. Enjoy.





best,
Don

E. E. Cummings vs. e. e. cummings vs. the universe (The Universe)

Cover by Harland Ristau

Michael Dylan Welch, a fine haiku poet and contributing editor to Spring, the journal of the E. E. Cummings Society, has appended a comment to a recent post on E. E. Cummings' birthday that seemed both interesting and important enough to pass along.

Just a quick note to suggest that E. E. Cummings' name be treated with the normal capitals. The lowercasing of his name was just something that his book designers did -- not Cummings himself. The policy and practice of the E. E. Cummings Society (I'm a longtime contributing editor to its journal Spring), Liveright (Cummings' publisher), and George Firmage (Cummings' literary executor, although recently deceased himself) is to treat the poet's name with initial capitals. Despite popular practice and perception, lowercasing his name is simply incorrect. For more information, please visit the definitive articles on the subject at http://www.gvsu.edu/english/cummings/caps.htm and http://www.gvsu.edu/english/cummings/caps2.html.



The myth of lowercasing E. E. Cummings' name is not unlike the myth of 5-7-5 syllables for English-language haiku. Too many people, even well-meaning poets and textbooks, have borrowed the number without thinking about what the number is counting. Yet people cling to their beliefs in odd ways, and perhaps lowercasing Cummings' name is similar. Or in some cases, they simply have heard anything to counter their beliefs. Please give the two essays I linked to a good read and give them a chance to shift your world just a little bit.



Michael Dylan Welch

I'd like to thank Michael for sending this along. Cummings was one of the first poets that "spoke to me" as a teen, one of the first that motivated me to make a life of reading and writing (and editing) poetry. This is the first I've heard this, though that is not surprising since I'm hardly a scholar and have never read a full-length biography. The fact that this misnomer is so culturally all pervasive is truly amazing. I've followed and read Michael's links in their entirety and would urge others to do so if you need convincing.

It should be mentioned that probably what added to the confusion is that Cummings occasionally did use the lower case spelling but I think it is very clear that, overall, it was his desire that his name be capped in standard fashion.

The intrepid Ed Baker has followed Michael's comments with a link he sent along to a Wikipedia article, that has some interesting links of it's own, and links to the articles Michael cites above. Ed also posits the opinion that Cummings probably just went along with the publisher's whim when the lower case spelling was used and that's how the whole thing got legs.

This week I read a slim volume of poems from the Chinese Tang dynasty entitled In Love With the Way and ran across a poem that reminded me of what is becoming my favorite Basho haiku (after reading it in so many different translations over the last few months). First, the Tang poem:



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

Grasses of the Ancient Plain

Tender grasses across the plain

Every year wither and grow back.

The wildfires fail to put an end to them,

With the breath of spring, they are reborn.

With their fragrances, they perfume the ancient way,
Emerald sheaves in the ancient ruins.
Agitated and quivering with nostalgia,
they bid farewell to the departing lord.

Bo Juyi

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

Here's Lucien Stryk's take on the Basho poem that came to mind:



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

Summer grasses,
all that remains
of soldiers' dreams.

Basho

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


I've linked up to some more Bo Juyi (or Bai Juyi) poems above, but here's another I ran across in a Witter Bynner translation:

A Suggestion to My Friend Liu

There's a gleam of green in an old bottle,
There's a stir of red in the quiet stove,
There's a feeling of snow in the dusk outside -
What about a cup of wine inside?

I've been busy this past week getting over a nasty cold and contacting folks about the Basho Haiku Challenge. Because I lost some time to the former, I'm still busy with the later but hope to be getting to it over the next 10 or so days.

Here's a bit of interesting news from the Japanese paper The Mainichi Daily News for those with a fondness for ancient Japanese poetry, specifically the Manyoshu. Also a great notice from the New York Times on a new film by one my favorite counterculture heroes, Patti Smith. And finally, for fans of Albert Huffstickler, Nerve Cowboy has posted the poems Huff published there from 1996 to 2002.

Johnny Baranski's Pencil Flowers is one of the books from the Near Perfect Books of Poetry list and tiny words (if you click their link, you'll see a fine haiku by the Basho Challenge winner, Roberta Beary) has posted a couple of his haiku. Here's one:

New Year's morning--
old haiku linked together
with cobwebs

I hope to be regularly posting samples from books selected for the Near Perfect list in the regular Thursday postings when time and space allow (almost slipped into a Star Trek episode there), sometimes with samples from the Back Issue archive and sometimes alone.

This week's back issue is #71, from August 1995. Full of many flights of fancy, we are all brought down to earth from lyrically ethereal realms by the ever insightful (balloon: here, pin: here) Wayne Hogan. Enjoy.



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

your body

each piece a shining eye
examining
the rest of the explosion.

scarecrow

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



Air served at room temperature reverberates until we snow.

Sheila E. Murphy

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

late summer rain
one droplet among many
catches my eye, trickles down the glass
thoughts of you
so different from all the rest

Cathy Drinkwater Better

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



the dead spider's web
holds the morning catch --
opaque beads of dew

Dorothy McLaughlin

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

New And Collected Poems

-----------I.
Sun's branches leap
from the fingers across town
a one-way sign.

----------II.
Talk Walks on
the wild side, spokes spin
too fast to be.

----------III.
Silence squiggles and
creeps upstream, history
giggles.

Wayne Hogan

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



Perhaps, we should end it all with the man himself, EEC, having the last word in a poem ya just don't see everyday:


--

----Seeker of Truth

seeker of truth

follow no path
all paths lead where

truth is here

Till next time,

Don

Ichigyoshi and Falling Off The Mountain

Been dragging a bit on this end of things with the cold that everyone seems to have. Actually lost the entire weekend's work to bed rest, soup, Thomas Hardy, and Conan the Barbarian.

I've had worse weekends; unfortunately, contributor copies of the new issues, #165 and 166, were slated to go out and, so will be delayed a week.

A. Scott Britton of Ichigyoshi has asked me to post his call for submissions, which I'm happy to do. Here it is:



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

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

Ichigyoshi is a web-based journal designed to foster a

discourse that is both academic and colloquial in nature.

In addition to essays, manifestos, and the general writer's

statement, Ichigyoshi will pursue this goal through the

publication of three types of literature: 1. experimental

literature, 2. translation, and 3. [very] short poetry.

To see what we're all about and to find out how to submit

your work, please make your way to the Ichigyoshi website:

http://ichigyoshi.blogspot.com

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



Speaking of the very short poem, one of the best kept secrets around (ed markowski knows!) is Grant Hackett and his simply marvelous Falling Off the Mountain blog. Grant is a purveyor of what he calls the monostitch, the one-line poem. He is, to put it simply, tapped directly into the source; his work is magical nearly beyond measure, which is saying something considering it never goes beyond one-line (define infinity now). Grant's work will be appearing in future issues of Lilliput (in fact, he'll be in one of the two new issues), but I felt it was time to let the cat out of the bag and share his work with those who find brevity a guiding principle.

Read a dozen. See if you don't get hooked.

Finally, head on over to f/k/a where David recounts the growing tragedy of SBS (Shaken Baby Syndrome). His informative post is accompanied by some heartrending verse by Issa, George Swede and Michael Dylan Welch.

Michael's recent comments on Issa's Untidy Hut re: the e. e. cummings vs. E. E. Cummings controversy will be covered in Thursday's regular post.

best,
Don

e. e. cummings scorning the pomp of must and shall

For e. e. cummings, on his birthday:

my father moved through dooms of love
through sames of am through haves of give,
singing each morning out of each night
my father moved through depths of height

this motionless forgetful where
turned at his glance to shining here;
that if(so timid air is firm)
under his eyes would stir and squirm

newly as from unburied which
floats the first who,his april touch
drove sleeping selves to swarm their fates
woke dreamers to their ghostly roots

and should some why completely weep
my father's fingers brought her sleep:
vainly no smallest voice might cry
for he could feel the mountains grow.

Lifting the valleys of the sea
my father moved through griefs of joy;
praising a forehead called the moon
singing desire into begin

joy was his song and joy so pure
a heart of star by him could steer
and pure so now and now so yes
the wrists of twilight would rejoice

keen as midsummer's keen beyond
conceiving mind of sun will stand,
so strictly(over utmost him
so hugely) stood my father's dream

his flesh was flesh his blood was blood:
no hungry man but wished him food;
no cripple wouldn't creep one mile
uphill to only see him smile.

Scorning the Pomp of must and shall
my father moved through dooms of feel;
his anger was as right as rain
his pity was as green as grain

septembering arms of year extend
yes humbly wealth to foe and friend
than he to foolish and to wise 
offered immeasurable is

proudly and(by octobering flame
beckoned)as earth will downward climb,
so naked for immortal work
his shoulders marched against the dark

his sorrow was as true as bread:
no liar looked him in the head;
if every friend became his foe
he'd laugh and build a world with snow.

My father moved through theys of we,
singing each new leaf out of each tree
(and every child was sure that spring
danced when she heard my father sing)

then let men kill which cannot share,
let blood and flesh be mud and mire,
scheming imagine,passion willed,
freedom a drug that's bought and sold

giving to steal and cruel kind,
a heart to fear,to doubt a mind,
to differ a disease of same,
conform the pinnacle of am

though dull were all we taste as bright,
bitter all utterly things sweet,
maggoty minus and dumb death
all we inherit,all bequeath

and nothing quite so least as truth
--i say though hate were why men breathe--
because my Father lived his soul
love is the whole and more than all

And here is a performance piece, by Lila Sakura,
of cummings "Pity this busy monster, manunkind",
that perfectly captures, um, today.




best,
Don

Gary Snyder, Alan Watts, and Five Poets with Staying Power

Cover by Oberc

As noted on today's Writer's Almanac, it is the poet Gary Snyder's birthday (in addition, don't miss Patrick Phillips's sad and beautiful poem "Matinee" on today's WA posting). Recent winner of the 2008 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for lifetime achievement, Snyder, along with poet, novelist and activist Wendell Berry, is one of our finest living writers; both celebrate and advocate for the earth from which we come and to which we return. As Alan Watts used to say, we are not born "into" the world, we are born "out" of it.

Rus Bowden's Poetic Ticker pointed me to the following Gary Snyder video on YouTube. I'm linking directly to part 1 for convenience. Click here for parts 2 through 4.






As part of the reorganization of the sidebar (look right) on this site, I've put together a group of links to the work of Issa, patron of all things small. Lots of interest may be found there.

There are two other notes before getting to this week's selection from the Lilliput archive. The Washington Post recently had a posting on their "Short Stack" blog entitled "Five Poets With Staying Power." There are at least two on the list I agree with. The comments that follow the posting are even more interesting than the choices. Any thoughts on your 5 poets with staying power (I'll take Whitman, Dickinson, Sexton, Shakespeare, and cummings - Frost would be 6th)? And, for those who might have missed it here, my review of Mary Oliver's new book, "Red Bird," has been posted at the library blog "Eleventh Stack."

This week's issue of Lilliput is #93, from December 1997. Here are three tiny highlights:



Before the wake ...
the eldest daughter helps
with her mother's make-up.

Patrick Sweeney

at the zoo
not a single
human face

George Ralph

ancient headstones
the names and numbers
worn to mutters

William Hart

And one to lighten the day:



Another Contributor's Notes
"I learned at the Iowa
Writers' Workshop that if you don't
jiggle the toilet's knob two or three
times, it won't ever stop flushing."

Wayne Hogan

Today is the last day for the free 6 issue gift subscription offer to Lilliput Review. Details at the link.


best,
Don