Tuesday is Election Day and they'll be no comment here, except to say this week's selection for Issa's Sunday Service is "As I Went Out One Morning" by Bob Dylan. The album from which it comes, John Wesley Harding, has been a long time favorite of mine for many reasons, not the least of which is the drumming of Kenny Buttrey. Aside from the solo albums, it is one the most stripped down, certainly the cleanest of all productions, over the entire span of Dylan's career. Beside Buttrey and Dylan, there was Charlie McCoy on bass and Pete Drake on pedal steel guitar. That's it and it's truly amazing.
The lyrics are transcendent, the songs sublime. It echoes through the years with a timelessness that not very many albums have. If I had to compare it to anything, I'd compare it not to another album but a book. A once-in-a-lifetime, much loved book.
I'll leave it there.
Think Tom Paine.
--------
Death has
my father's eyes,
pale blue and crisp
as autumn mornings.
best,
Don
PS Get 2 free issues Get 2 more free issues Lillie poem archive
Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 74 songs
Hear all 74 at once on the the LitRock Jukebox
Here are two poems from the archive that shared the same page in an issue, #113, from way back in November 2000.
The Symbolism of Breath
Everything
turns to steam
in October
and the fog
pours thick
off
of your skin.
C. C. Russell
Death has
my father's eyes,
pale blue and crisp
as autumn mornings.
Albert Huffstickler
even to these old eyes--
cherry blossoms!
cherry blossoms!
Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue
best,
Don
PS Get 2 free issues Get 2 more free issues Lillie poem archive
Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 74 songs
Hear all 74 at once on the the LitRock Jukebox
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2 comments:
"i told her with my voice" such a good line.
stumbled across this today, and thought it might align with the sort of election day poem you'd enjoy:
Election Day
by William Carlos Williams
Warm sun, quiet air
an old man sits
in the doorway of
a broken house--
boards for windows
plaster falling
from between the stones
and strokes the head
of a spotted dog
Ah, Paterson, NJ, I wanna say I know that stoop, and thousands more just the same, not unlike the stoops of Pittsburgh, really, the rowhouses and the tumble down sentiment and life being lived, while something, something goes on in the background, some sort of heavy, persistent static (only it's felt, not heard), big, maybe, and important, but not today.
Not today.
(thanks, né ... you were right, I liked it)
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