Pilgrim's Progress: Issa's Sunday Service, #104

I hardly need an excuse to feature a song by Procol Harum; they've already made the list here and here  and here, to say nothing about this non-Sunday Service rant   (in fact, there is even a post that compares Shelley's "Ozymandias" and Keith Reid "Conquistador", dating way back to the old Lilliput blog, "Beneath Cherry Blossoms") Since it's Gary Brooks birthday today, May 29th, we'll call it excuse du jour, needed or no, and make it a fourth (or fifth) appearance.

"Pilgrim's Progress" is the last song on the seminal A Salty Dog album, a summing up of went on before.  The litrock connection is to John Bunyan's book of the same, being a title shout-out and all.   It continues the loose nautical theme that permeates the album, dealing with anchors, explorers, pirates, and all.  The last 3 lines are not as honest as it gets with rock but, in my opinion, with literature.

We are all taking turns passing it on ...

Pilgrim's Progress
   I sat me down to write a simple story
   which maybe in the end became a song
   In trying to find the words which might begin it
   I found these were the thoughts I brought along

   At first I took my weight to be an anchor
   and gathered up my fears to guide me round
   but then I clearly saw my own delusion
   and found my struggles further bogged me down

   In starting out I thought to go exploring
   and set my foot upon the nearest road
   In vain I looked to find the promised turning
   but only saw how far I was from home

   In searching I forsook the paths of learning
   and sought instead to find some pirate's gold
   In fighting I did hurt those dearest to me
   and still no hidden truths could I unfold

   I sat me down to write a simple story
   which maybe in the end became a song
   The words have all been writ by one before me
   We're taking turns in trying to pass them on
   Oh, we're taking turns in trying to pass them on

                                    Keith Reid

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This week's poem comes from Lilliput Review #90, from which only one poem over the years has been featured on this blog.  It would seem that, perhaps, #90 wasn't quite the issue I thought it to be at the time I laid it out back in July 1997.  I could be wrong.  Like a poet's poem, once you let something go it's out there; the same is true for an editor and her/his work.  Here's one, however, I find particularly relevant.  Enjoy.

For Cavafy

   The poems are sad and short:
   love half-remembered,
   history--beautiful, closed and Greek.
   But what I like best
   is the blank three-quarters page,
   white as a statue's marble eyes- -

   a space to write or cry.

   Bruce Williams

spring rain--
there's one window
per person

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

PS Really happy I got through the whole post and didn't mention the other thing. 

PPS  Get 2 free issues    Get 2 more free issues     Lillie poem archive

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Russell Libby: Moments

You can find Russell Libby's work around; there is this little gem, published online by the Poetry Foundation (who kindly supply a brief bio of the poet), and which puts me, neither mathematician, scientist, or farmer, in mind of one of my favorite Sherlock Holmes stories, The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual.  Though I love my Sherlock Holmes, I must say that I like the resolution of Libby's "Applied Geometry" much better than Conan Doyle's.  Think heart over head, if you will.

It seems Ted Kooser would agree; he chose to feature the same poem on "American Life in Poetry."

I know Russell primarily through the magazine I edit, Lilliput Review, and his work that I've published there. In addition, he was the winner of an impromptu New Year's Haiku/Tanka challenge here at the Hut.   Everything comes from Three Sisters Farm, his address, and his descriptions of nature and the world about him have always had great appeal for me.

Awhile back, probably longer than I care to think (so as to avoid embarrassing myself in public intentionally),  Russell sent me off a modest little chapbook of his work with the simple title Moments.  I kept it nearby my desk, in a chaotic work area where things tend to alternately sink and surface, and sink and surface again.  I'd dipped into his book a few times and nothing grabbed me strongly enough to continue at any given off moment.  This is hardly surprising, however, given my USA Today/haiku attention span.  One day, though, I got some purchase, cleared some room, made myself comfortable, and took in the whole work. And I enjoyed it very much.

I figured out pretty quickly why it hadn't connected with me initially.  Most of the work literally captures a  moment and, as in classical haiku, those moments are strictly portrayed, with very little, if any, judgment, resolution, or speculation.

Seems I lean a little toward if not resolution or satori at least the suggestion of same.

Sometimes I think I'm in the wrong business ... not attentive enough, not informed enough, not calm enough etc.  This, I'm thinking, is one of those times because there is some fine, fine work here, indeed.

If ever there was a moment, here it is, from "Last day in June":

Heron tracks visible
Two feet below
The clear-flowing stream water

This is one of 4 such moments in the day listed in the collective title "Last of day" June.  Here is a separate, untitled poem:

Just as the Inuit have many words for snow,
in some forgotten language
there is a word for the sound of the south wind
as it pushes across the tops of the ashes
and catches in the pine trees just beyond.

If there isn't, this definition will do very nicely until someone, somewhere conjures one up.  A definition without a word; now that's right up my alley.

Here is the final section of a five part poem entitled "Western Bay":

Sound carries so easily
over still water;
important fact to remember.

Another stand alone piece, one I am mighty jealous of follows, concerning a kestrel and a mouse.  I'll tell you why after you read it:

Kestrel flies towards the woods,
long-tailed mouse in its talons,
the tail straight out
under the rapidly-beating wings.

I've been trying to capture a similar moment I witnessed, with a crow and a mouse, over a year ago and have never quite gotten it.  The moment has one distinctly different feature, which is what I've been after all these months, but I'm jealous that Libby got his ("the tail straight out" is it).

Here is section 2 from a poem of  9 sections entitled "On McGaffey":

Face pushing through
spider web.
How many times
each life
the unexpected.

This really has the feel of a modern dilemma; I know I've thought it or something very close to it.  How many times the unexpected, how many times the unexplained?

Section 4 from the same poem:

Half
a tiny white
bird's egg-
shell dissolves
as I
lift.

Another moment, without judgment or even speculation.  Just a moment, this moment, now.

Finally, one brief poem:

Raking leaves into piles
Hawkweed and heal-all
Blooming beneath

Notice the present tense, notice the lack of ending punctuation, something Libby does more frequently with brief poems than longer ones, but something that may have some significance.  For me, this moment, which is now, is continuous - will the hawkweed and the heal-all bloom through the leaves? 

Will the wind have its say?

What the poet has done here, particularly with the shorter pieces, is what the classic haiku poet did (& does): presents the reader with the moment and says, here, this is it, do what you will with it.

The egg-shell, the spider web, the mouse's tail, heron tracks, sound in the trees and over water, buried plants blooming, blooming.

Will you ignore the moment, or not see it at all?

This is fine collection of moments.  The many poems I've excerpted contain other, related moments from the same time, or contiguous with them.  There is a calmness at their center, bound together as it is via the consciousness of the perceiver, the poet. 

Lucky we are to have a poet who pays particular attention.    Mail him $4 and you can get 36 pages of wonder, many of which have more than one poem.  Payment to Russell Libby, 53 Weston Road, Mount Vernon, ME  04352.



--------------------------------- 


This week's feature poem comes from Lilliput Review #156, March 2007, and seems to be appropriate today, considering the proliferation of natural disasters over the last few months. 

From a wryer perspective, this one also goes out to all the end-gamers who were disappointed in the lack of revelation this past weekend.

Laura Gulli explains it a lot better than me.  So here she is.

    prayer for uncertainty

glory be to the incessant
to the obsessive
and to the irreverent
as it may have been in the beginning
is now
           sometimes
and ever shall be
or not
compassion without end
amen

Laura Gulli

taking turns
with the prayer gong...
mountain cuckoo

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

PS Really happy I got through the whole post and didn't mention the other thing. 

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Wednesday Haiku, Week #18: William Sorlien

Autumn Buddha: photo by Jake Barnes

Wednesday Haiku, Week #17

regretful
hanging up her beret
she slips into autumn

William Sorlien

not knowing that
autumn's begun, puppy
Buddha!

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

PS Really happy I got through the whole post and didn't mention the other thing. 

PPS  Get 2 free issues    Get 2 more free issues     Lillie poem archive

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Jools and Jim: Issa's Sunday Service, #103

Note: Due to a blogger two day glitch & an overlapping five day trip to the woods, there was no Sunday service last week, breaking a string of 102 weeks in a row.  About f'ing time, I'd say.  Here's what was slated then.  Now if I could only replicate for you what I was doing a week ago today.
 
May 20th was Pete Townshend's birthday so I thought this week I'd feature one of my fav songs of his, "Jools and Jim," from his sensational solo album, Empty Glass.

First off, this song just plain rocks out.  I'm not one for playing songs over and over, unless trying to catch an obscure lyric (still another thing eliminated by the majestic ubiquity that is the net), but this song I've played many a time, over and over and over ...

Inevitably, I get up and dance and dance and dance.

As to what's going on in the song, well, the title characters, it seems, were two rock critics who decided to trash Keith Moon after his death and Townshend took exception.

A big exception.

"They don't give a shit that Keith Moon's dead?
"Is that exactly what I thought I read?"

Lines sung with such venom that the intended targets were probably very glad not to be in the same room when they were sung.

But let's go back to the beginning.  Empty Glass is named after the idea that, via mediation or similar practice, one empties oneself (the vessel) to prepare to be filled with the now, the is, enlightenment, godstuff, etc..  Townshend was very much into Eastern philosophy around this time (and may still be) and it certainly comes out any number of times on this album.  This song references Krishna, as well as Christ, which is how it gets its lit cred.

"And when I did my first solo album, I called it 'Empty Glass', 'cause of this idea that when you go to the tavern -- which is to God, you know -- and you ask for His love -- He's the bartender, you know -- and He gives you a drink, and what you have to give Him is an empty glass. You know there's no point giving Him your heart if it's full already; there's no point going to God if your heart's full of Doris."

In this light, the first stanza of the song is interesting, indeed.  But what about all the rage throughout?

Well, yes, there is that, and that is after all the point.  What is brilliant is Townshend's use of the musical bridge lyrically, admitting his own hypocrisy, saying if we looked eye to eye it might all be different, reaching out a hand to "you, you two ... ."

In that room, when the song was sung ...

He brings home the lesson as he moves from the bridge and points the two callous critics to the way, asking if they understand the teachings of Krishna and Christ, and, if so, what after all are you (they) on about?  Then back to that first, very interesting verse.

Make of it what you will - for rock, I believe it is brilliant, indeed.  Plus the fact that it contains his best line ever

"Your hearts are melting in pools of gin"

Here's the whole kabob:


Jools and Jim

Anyone can have an opinion
Anyone can join in and jump
Anyone can pay or just stay away
Anyone can crash and thump

But did you read the stuff that Julie said?
Or little Jimmy with his hair dyed red?
They don't give a shit Keith Moon is dead
Is that exactly what I thought I read?

Typewriter tappers
You're all just crappers
You listen to love with your intellect
A4 pushers
You're all just cushions
Morality ain't measured in a room
He wrecked.

Anyone can buy some leather
Ain't no better than wearing sheep
anyone can sell lucky heather
You can see that words are cheap!

But did you read the stuff that Julie said?
Or little Jimmy with his hair dyed red?
They have a standard of perfection there
That you and me can never share

Typewriter bangers on
You're all just hangers on
Everyone's human 'cept Jools and Jim
Late copy churners
Rock and Roll learners
Your hearts are melting in pools
Of gin

But I know for sure that if we met up eye to eye
A little wine would bring us closer, you and I
'Cos your right, hypocrisy will be the death of me
And theirs an I before e when your spelling ecstasy
And you, you two......

Did you hear the stuff that Krishna said?
Or know for you that Jesus' blood was shed?
Is it in your heart or in your head?
Or does the truth lie in the center spread?

Anyone can have an opinion
Anyone can join in and jump
Anyone can pay or just stay away
Anyone can crash and thump

Oklahoma, Oklahoma, Oklahoma......OK.

I've got my thoughts about that most enigmatic of enigmatic last lines but it's only conjecture.  I'll share it if you really want to hear.

The albums most well-known song, "Rough Boys," is also a flat out rocker, as can be heard, if not seen, on the video for the song:





Of course, anyone alive way back when will ask: any connection between the song "Jools & Jim" and the famous Francois Traffaut film "Jules et Jim" and my answer would have to be I don't have a clue.  But just in case anybody comes up with a connection here's the opening sequence with subtitles:





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This week's poem comes from Lilliput Review, #93, a little poem I've always loved, maybe because I'm a fan of this and this.  Come to think of it, maybe that's why I got into this.

   Wondering

how it is done
the vanishing,
to step behind an atom
the oak crown still roaring

Georgette Perry

the peaks of clouds
behind one blade of grass
vanish

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

PS Really happy I got through the whole post and didn't mention the other thing. 

PPS  Get 2 free issues    Get 2 more free issues     Lillie poem archive

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Bob Arnold's Yokel: The Continuum Is Clear

John Martone is one of my favorite contemporary poets of the short form, so when he offered a review of Bob Arnold's new book, Yokel - A Long Green Mountain Poem, I was happy to accept.   It is with great pleasure that I turn the critical reins over to John, particularly since I've published and always enjoy reading Arnold's work.  John's opinions, of course, are his own. 

And let me hasten to add they are opinions I respect mightily.


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


Bob Arnold: Yokel – A Long Green Mountain Poem. Guilford, VT: Longhouse, 2011. xvi + 139 pages. $18.

Yokel: n. A country bumpkin; a naïve or gullible rustic:  “These conspirators were not all the unlettered yokels which some historians would have them to be” (E.P. Thompson). Perhaps from English dialectical yokel, green woodpecker (probably imitative of its note). 

--American Heritage Dictionary

Arnold would appreciate the irony of our ‘American’ dictionary citing The Rise of the English Working Class to describe what his backwoods folks are not. His Long Green Mountain Poem is a study in human ecology, and both the people and crises he shows us have now-obscure roots, of course, in the world of Thompson’s masterwork. Our poet has tilted word’s meaning though, for our Yokel is poet-conspirator and participant-observer, a green woodpecker hammering away at the insects in a tall tree. Someone we hear.

Native, the otherwise nameless protagonists who populate Arnold’s world, is the voiceless 21st century back country dweller, male or female, who inhabits (often but not exclusively) trailer, drives either a derelict junker, spiffy new Dodge trucks, or ancient tractor towing hay wagons now laden with defunct computers and other appliances to  pastureland dump. Native is poor; and the intrusion of manufactured trash in all its forms renders the poverty of his rural world even starker. In Back Road Archaeology, the male of the species cooks the family breakfast of pancakes then—

Tosse[s] the paper plate onto a year’s
Worth of paper plates on the back porch,
Each licked clean by his dogs.

In Native Never Made It, we read how he “got in/ With a wrong bunch”:

Much younger—
Drugs and drinking—
And they thought
Nothing about tanking
Up an old fart logger
With wicked cocaine
And dumping his
Gasping body of
At the emergency
Room entrance
From a car that
Never stopped—
Just like the movies

Both character and place have been poisoned by a virulent culture. Exotic/non-native industrial species are a threatening presence, turning up throughout the collection. A one-time Farmer now installs wood-pellet stoves that he doesn’t quite understand.  He drives “A beautiful pickup truck with the fanciest side mirrors/ on both doors. It seemed like 3D. Elsewhere, powerful men consider poisoning an old mill with toxic waste in order to preserve it from developers.

Poisoned and expropriated, Arnold’s Vermont is a third-world country. His Pastures of Plenty are reduced to a junkyard, or worse:

If it’s not a junkyard—then it will be real estate.
If it’s real estate—it will be a few new
Houses built lopsided on turgid ground
                                                   …ruined
By oil spills, junk metal and pallets of old
Batteries…

Arnold watches. As we know from such earlier books as On Stone, in which he records the subtleties of building a stone playhouse for his son Carson, he is nothing if not careful. (If you ever have the privilege of visiting his home, you will find the 10,000 books of his store and every tool in his workshop each in its place, ready to hand in the flash of an eye.) His craft, his design, is unobtrusive –no showy  bricoleur, but every element counts. Arnold’s informal pentameter, for example, argues with Frost, much as that poet argued with Emerson before him. We don’t have Frost’s family tragedies any longer, because the family has been eviscerated. What we see instead is the erasure of a world, in the trailers that replace wooden houses (only to be abandoned in turn as in Gone), in chance self-sufficiency so often overwhelmed by the presumptions of new-comer wealth. It would probably be stretching things to say that the class divide is as stark as one would see in the Dominican Republic, say, or to call this cultural genocide, but the continuum is pretty clear.

The poet lives in his world, though, and that life always feels stronger than the dangers that imperil it. We see this in two poems for his son Carson, reflecting that meticulous care mentioned above—

The Worst Thing About a Young Son

Your orderly
Toolbox will never
Be the same


One of the Best Things about a Young Son

That he cares
That you have a toolbox
In the first place

There are poems of profound affection for Susan (a longer collection – 30-plus years! is forthcoming) a magnificent poem for Richard Levasseur, and elegies for others who live again.  And there is the affirmation with which this Green Mountain poem ends, in which Arnold, like Thoreau of The Maine Woods, improves our ignorance:

Go-Along

stars
bright

enough
light

snowshoe
trail the

woods all
night

—john martone

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


Issue #155 of Lilliput Review was jam packed with a fine collection of short work.  You can find 5 fine examples in this past post.   And here's one more, from March 2007, to give you pause:

Early sun.
The snow-covered
manure pile
bright as Mount Fuji.

Don't talk to me
about enlightenment.

    Lynne Bama

nightingale --
even his shit
gets wrapped in paper.

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

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Wednesday Haiku, #17: Miriam Sagan

  

Wednesday Haiku, Week #17

notes of the Haydn score--
small beetle waves antenna
from the kitchen chair

Miriam Sagan

don't sing, insects!
the world will get better
in its own time

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

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Christien Gholson: "For the tiny insect casting a long shadow ..."

Utamaro: Snake & Green Lizard

Christien Gholson is one of the finest poets I have had the pleasure to publish in the 22 years I've been doing Lilliput Review.   The greatest compliment I can give any poet is simply that she or he is unique: Christien is certainly that.  I've published two chapbooks in the Modest Proposal series by him, along with three broadsides.

What follows is the first publication of this poem anywhere.  I thought about the various paper forms in which I could publish it (broadside or Brobdingnag Feature Poem) and electronic and left it up to Christien.  He chose electronic and I'm very happy he did so I could share this with Lilliput's and Issa's web following.  Enjoy.

For the tiny insect casting a long shadow
across the page of a Burton Watson translation of Ch’i-Chi

“…in my poems I think how cold Hsuan-tsung must be tonight.”

1.

Wings smaller than a lizard’s eye:

Emperor Hsuan-tsung

     attracted to his own name in print?

Wing-veins invisible as wind, thinner

 than the Emperor’s

                        thousand year old hair.

Everything returns.

2.

Emperor, Emperor,

egg to larvae to wing in the time it takes

                                    to turn the page.

Nothing returns.

                       

3.

Born from water, nameless.

Older than stone, nameless.

Pattern of air, nameless.

Feeding on light, nameless.

Everything returns.

                              

4.

Wind-chimes to the left, right:

Calligraphy of lizard tracks in dust.

Nothing returns…

                                    Christien Gholson 



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




This week's featured poems come from Lilliput Review, #153.  Two very different dogs that shared the same page, back in November 2006.   I've read Don Wlekliniski's poem at local readings featuring Lilliput  work - it's fun to read, when you put your back into it.  Afterwards, folks come up an scratch your head.

Enjoy.

  business as usual

money says have a nice day

money says bark like a dog

money says bark like a dog
and roll over

money says blame it on each other

money says have another biscuit

Don Wleklinski

The dog of myself
walking the dog of the dog
through the dog of the world.
I think the dog sniffing around
for the perfect plac to void
is the poetry of place.
And I think the poetry of the void
is the dog of myself tied
to the dying tree of the world,
sniffing eternity out.

Paul Hostovsky

the lazy dog
barks lying down...
plum trees in bloom

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

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Wednesday Haiku, #16 : Angele Ellis

  


Wednesday Haiku, Week #16

coffee steam rises
you move
from one dream to another

Angele Ellis

in the nightingale's
song, steam
from the Buddha's rice

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

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Robert Johnson @ 100: 10 Tunes in Memory

Yesterday, I meant to imbed this song widget in the post as it was the 100th anniversary of Robert Johnson's birth this past Saturday.    Somehow I thought I did but didn't - yes, I've been a bit busy lately.

Thanks to my old buddy, Greg, for the reminder.

But better late than etc., so here it is. It is safe to say, no Robert Johnson, no rock and roll.

Period.

singing insects, too
make music
in this world

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

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Get Down Moses: Issa's Sunday Service, #102

NOTE: I'm happy to say that the problem with the listening widgets from grooveshark is solved and so the widget has returned to the Sunday Service.  In addition, I've added one to last week's post of Leaky Lifeboat (for Gregory Corso) by Sonic Youth if you'd care to give a listen.

If there is anyone who is later to the game when it comes to appreciating Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros are you ever in for a treat.  Run right out and give a listen to all their songs - an excellent band lead by one of the great musicians of rock, Joe Strummer.

Today's selection is another in a long line of litrock songs that reference the Bible.  Just as one of rock's primary progenitor, the Blues, was known as the devil's music, a sort of secular Cain to Gospel music's Abel, so, too, rock is deeply rooted in the Bible.   This particular song not only mentions the Bible but the title is an allusion to the well-known spiritual, "Go Down, Moses."  There is also the Faulkner book of the same title, but I'm not thinking Joe was going there.

Nice title, that.  Here's the lyrics:



Get Down Moses
 
Once I got to the mountain top, tell you what I could see,
Prairie full of lost souls running from the priests of iniquity
Where the hell was Elijah?
What do you do when the prophecy game was through?

We gotta take the walls of Jericho
Put your lips together and blow
To the very top
They say the truth crystallizes like jewels in the rock, in the rock

Get Down Moses - part another sea
Carve another tablet out of L.S.D.
Get Down Moses - out in Tennessee
Get Down Moses - down in the street
The blood is washing down all the gravel to our feet
Get Down Moses - down in the pit

Lying in a dream, cross battle field,
Crashing on a downtown strip,
Looking in the eyes of the diamonds and the spies and the hip
Who's sponsoring the crack ghetto?
Who's lecturing? Who's in the know and in the don't know?

You better take the walls of Jericho
Put your lips together and blow
Goin' to the very top
Where the truth crystallizes like jewels, in the rock, in the rock

Get Down Moses - from the eagle's aerie
We gotta to make new friends out of old enemies
Get Down Moses - back in Tennessee
Get Down Moses - down with the dreads
They got a lotta reasoning in a dreadhead
Get Down Moses - down in the street
Get Down Moses

Get Down Moses - part another sea
Carve another tablet out of L.S.D.
Get Down Moses - out in Tennessee
Get Down Moses - down in the street
The blood is washing down all the gravel to our feet
Get Down Moses - down in the pit
Get Down Moses

Get Down Moses

Get Down Moses
We need to eat, we gotta chew it over with our wisdom teeth
Get Down Moses

Yes, indeed, "Where the truth crystallizes like jewels, in the rock, in the rock."

The rock, the rock.


Finally, here's an electric live performance, with varied lyrics, just a month before Joe's death:






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This week's feature poems come from Lilliput Review #94 and sat side-by-side on a tiny little page.  One is by the artist/poet Wayne Hogan, the other by Huff (Albert Huffstickler).  They make as good companions as they did 13 plus years ago in December 1997.

  The Way It Is And Will Be Was

Paddling
up a Venetian canal
leaving a trail you'll never
come back on but
can see from a long way off
as it lasts only
a moment in the pouring rain

Wayne Hogan

the rain
knits us
with threads
of silver

Albert Huffstickler

And a third old codger just joined the party, making four by my count.  Who brought the cards?





a day for wandering
a day for haiku...
spring rain

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

PS  Get 2 free issues    Get 2 more free issues     Lillie poem archive

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Woman by Albert Huffstickler

I feel like I've been going non-stop for the last 4 months, so I'm calling on an old friend to bail we out today: Albert Huffstickler.   Sure, Albert's been gone almost 10 years - how can it be - yet still, all the time, it seems almost everyday, he comes along and he helps me out.  Sometimes, it's with little things - a smile and a nod and off.

Other times, it's bigger things.  Huff knew how to tackle those.  Take it apart, piece by piece - one little thing at a time.

A couple of weeks ago, another longtime poet and friend, T. Kilgore Splake, sent along some of Huff's poems he ran across. He knew, or sensed, that was just the thing for me. Settling down with those was very helpful, it had a calming effect - like talking to an old friend on the phone.  Yeah, it's long distance, but that's a tab I'll pick up any day.

So, I thought I'd share one of them with you.  Here goes:

   Woman

If stone could be soft
and retain its softness,
you'd be stone.
There is, in your sadness,
the fatedness of stone.
As stone would be stone
and nothing else,
so you are soft and
nothing will sway or
bend or change that softness.
It is a stone softness,
knowing itself, as stone
knows itself, to be
this way and no other.
This is your truth
and how you must be known-
as that which is soft
and at the same time stone.

     Albert Huffstickler

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This week's featured poem is from Lilliput Review,  #152, a beautiful little poem by Martin Grantham.

   Sierra Azul

Here, when I look up, are mountains,
the elegant curve of their backs
draped in life's dark blue cloak.
So much unchanging in our tiny time
goes unattended, but as I move,
these mountains move with me.

              Martin Grantham

for our sake enduring
the winter rain...
stone Buddha

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

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Wednesday Haiku #15 : Rick Daddario

Wednesday Haiku, Week #14

lantern yellow
the half moon boat
among stars

Rick Daddario

a hanging temple bell
a lantern...
and a peony

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

Photo by Bernd Haynold

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 101 songs

Subscribe to Lilliput Review

R. L. Greenfield: R. I. P

La Danse des Muses by Giulio Romano

One of the hardest things about being a long time small press editor, as well as simply a person on this spinning ball in space, is the passing of those we know. 

Recently, I sent out an all points bulletin trying to get in touch with the poet R. L. Greenfield, whose work bounced back to me in the mails.  A number of people had leads for me, which I really appreciated.  In searching myself, I ran across a relatively recent blog post review of Bukowski's Love Is a Dog From Hell by R. L. Greenfield.  I left a comment there in hope of making a direct connection.  This morning I received notification of a reply comment:

Just learned RL Greenfield passed away late March. Was “Googling” to see if he’d published anything new recently, and stumbled upon the sad news.  Amy.

I've been unable to find an obit, but there you have it.  This is one of the poems I'd commented on and was in the batch that bounced back to me.   Let this serve, for the moment, as a note in his memory:

You Were Always On My Mind (for Miele)

willie nelson singing
you were always on my mind

after lunch at Wendy's on Friday
& all the cash registers of the world

lock up & go into hibernation
the customers stop chewing

& the waitresses are all frozen in their tracks
willie nelson owns this moment & I pause & listern

as The Muse puts her hands inside my chest
& begins the pounding of the dough

R. L. Greenfield

To the memory of a small press poet ...

plum tree--
under blossoms' shine
an evening prayer

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 101 songs

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Leaky Lifeboat (for Gregory Corso): Issa's Sunday Service, #101

This week was the birthday of the fab Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth and so this week's selection for the Sunday Service comes from Sonic Youth and is entitled Leaky Lifeboat (for Gregory Corso).  Paste Magazine in a review of The Eternal album, from which "Leaky Lifeboat (for Gregory Corso)" comes, says that the song draws inspiration from the deceased New York beat poet and his poem “Leaky Lifeboat Boys,” comparing life on this planet to a vessel with a hole in it."

Here's the original Corso poem, which the song riffs off.

Sonic Youth has been a long time favorite of mine and here's why in a perfect, exhilirating live performance of "Leaky Lifeboat":






And finally, an interesting rendition of Corso's poem "The Whole Mess ... Almost," by someone sounding an awful lot like John Cale.  Enjoy.





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Prompted by this week's Wednesday Haiku feature on fireflies by Bob Carleton, Tom Clark posted a beautiful response, with amazing photographs and an even more amazing poem by Andrew Marvell.  Kindly, he dedicated it me.

Tom's regular sharing of wisdom, poetics, and wonder at his blog, Beyond the Pale, is one of the finest examples of poetry/poetics on the web.  It is well worth checking out regularly.  Tom is one of the finest poets of his generation and his generosity, wit, and lyricism come through with gentle, assured strength.


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This week's feature poem comes from Lilliput Review #95, from which 4 poems were featured in a previous post.

Riding the Curved Bowl

We're traveling together so we can't see
we're traveling at the speed of light--
our feet are years from our eyes;
To observers standing in another place,
on fulcra different from ours,
we look like we might be standing still,
when we're leaving before we've arrived.

                        Pendarvis

leaving my shoulder
for the Buddha's...
dragonfly

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 101 songs

Subscribe to Lilliput Review