Sunday, July 31, 2011

Walt Whitman's Niece: Issa's Sunday Service, #113







This is wonderfully odd song, recently suggested by a reader; somehow, I would love to hear someone arrange differently.  I know this is a bit of a sacrilege; after all it is Billy Bragg and Wilco - jeez, whaddya want already?  Of course, since this comes from the album Mermaid Avenue, which is made up of previously unreleased Woody Guthrie lyrics, it's not likely that anybody else will be rushing  to cover (re-cover?) this anytime soon.  Still and all, fine work all around and many thanks for the suggestion.

I share a birthday with Woody Guthrie: the 14th of July, Bastille Day, and that has always made me happy.  So has Woody.  First, Bob's classic tribute to Woody (no mistakes in that pickin' on this take) and then a real beaut by the man himself.


"Song to Woody" Bob Dylan



"Jesus Christ" by Woody Guthrie





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


This week's featured poem comes from Lilliput Review, #78, March 1996.  It's one ambivalent little beauty by one of my favorite haiku poets, Patrick Sweeney (who has promised to leave a little packet for me under the bridge by the Mon - no mean feat, internationally speaking).   The Deva King of Issa's little number may be seen portrayed, sans wasps' nest, at the head of this post.  Enjoy.



The scent of lime ends at her wrist
           Patrick Sweeney








the beehive dangles
from the Deva King's
wrist

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue





best,
Don





Send a single haiku for the Wednesday Haiku feature.  Here's how.

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 113 songs

Friday, July 29, 2011

Robert Bly: One Leg in the Bog



The new Robert Bly book is nothing short of exceptional.  Regular readers of this blog know I've had my issues with him over the years - it is hot and cold, no tepid Robert Bly for me.  What I love by him I love and Talking Into the Ear of a Donkey has some of his finest work.  Try this on for size:



Wanting Sumptuous Heavens 
  No one grumbles among the oyster clans,
  And lobsters play their bone guitars all summer.
  Only we, with our opposable thumbs, want
  Heaven to be, and God to come, again.
  There is no end to our grumbling; we want
  Comfortable earth and sumptuous heaven.
  But the heron standing on one leg in the bog
  Drinks his dark rum all day, and is content.

                                              Robert Bly




The work here has a certain rhythm that seems to be influenced by the ghazal form he has been working in more and more in recent years. This time out the poetry seems less restricted in both subject and execution.

I hope to dip into this volume again for a future post, possibly as soon as next Friday.   For now, with other obligations pressing this coming week, I'll keep it brief and leave it here.


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


This week's feature is a pair of poems by two like minded poets: John Martone and Dennis Maloney.  They shared the same page of Lilliput Review, #167 back in March 2009.   Here is a joyful reprise.  Enjoy.



wind
thru

pines
thru

sleep 

   John Martone








If you're kin to the pine
You'll love long,
Glisten in the rain,
Be lively in autumn,
And beautiful in snow.

             Dennis Maloney







the scrawny pine, too
looks extravagant...
summer moon
Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue





best,
Don





Send a single haiku for the Wednesday Haiku feature.  Here's how.

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 112 songs

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Wednesday Haiku, #28: Andrea Grillo




Wednesday Haiku, Week #27



nipple-hard cold who me predictable...
Andrea Grillo








a tall chrysanthemum
in the dead center
of the heat
Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue









best,
Don





Send a single haiku for the Wednesday Haiku feature.  Here's how.

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 112 songs

Sunday, July 24, 2011

Dream Gérard & The Lobster Quadrille: Issa's Sunday Service, #s 111 & 112








Here's a deep cut from one of the least known albums, the unfortunately titled When the Eagle Flies, by the seminal rock group, Traffic: "Dream Gerrard."  The song is an homage to the French Romantic poet, Gérard de Nerval.  His use of dreams had a great influence on the symbolists and surrealists who followed him.

Nerval described his own dream states as "supernaturaliste," a term Apollinaire later shortened to "sur-réaliste."  For more on this, his poetry, and his friendship with Baudelaire, check out this excellent overview. There is an interesting Harper's article which mentions Nerval's lobster fascination (he's the flâneur character you once heard of who took his lobster for a walk - remember?). 

For a remarkable different take on the same poem in the Harper article, check out this translation of "Golden Verses" from the Independent, so different, in fact, it seems like an entirely different poem.   A nice size selection of Nerval poems may be found here, with some individual translations here, here, and here.

All this, of course, put me in mind, or perhaps out of mind, of Lewis Carroll and the famous "Lobster Quadrille," since, if a lobster can walk on a leash, surely s/he may dance.   So, today you will get a two-fer on the Sunday Service, here is the video and song of "The Lobster Quadrille" by current rock phenoms, Franz Ferdinand:










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


This week's selection from the Lilliput Review archive comes from June 1996, issue #79.  An old friend speaks to us of how he was spoken to:




Inspiration
  It happens sometimes:
  someone inside me
  starts singing and
  I just listen to
  his voice and
  write it down.
Albert Huffstickler









loneliness--
that song the shrike
is singing!
Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue





Posts over the next two weeks will be intermittent as I own up to some long standing obligations which I'll no doubt report on here sometime soon.  Which helps explain today's two songs to make up for at least one lost un-forthcoming posting.



best,
Don




Send a single haiku for the Wednesday Haiku feature.  Here's how.

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 112 songs

Friday, July 22, 2011

Why I Give It Away Free


They say it's worth exactly what you pay for it.  So, in our consumerist society, when something is free, let the "buyer" beware, a maxim I follow faithfully myself.  There is, however, at least one assumption in that thought.

I've been giving it away free for 20 plus years.  Every time someone sends me an envelope of poems following the guidelines for submissions, they at least get a free issue of Lilliput Review in return.

So, this is bartering, a system of exchange if you will.  The issue is not really free - a stamp must go on the envelope, a SASE must be sent in return.  However, what is happening here is important if you are a poet with some forethought.  You get a chance to have a poem accepted for publication and, if not, you get a tiny magazine with 20 plus poems for "free."  This might give the poet a better idea of what the editor is interested in (you wouldn't believe how many poems I get that are over 20 lines, never mind the 10 line limit - but that's another rant).

I'll show you my poems if you show me yours ...

That's how barter works.  Doing this for 22 years I've given away thousands of "free" issues, connected with poets, found new subscribers, and published some dynamite poems.  Did I mention the mag is not in the red, and never has been.

Hmn.  Am I giving a few people some ideas?

Cheers!

In addition to this, on the web side of things, there are three ongoing projects that result in free issues to those who participate.   The Near Perfect Books of Poems project, the ongoing Issa's Sunday Service project, and the Wednesday Haiku feature on the blog.

And, as always, you can just send a SASE (standard business size, one 1st class stamp) and get a free issue.

All of this must result in a real minimal circulation, I mean nobody's going to buy what they can get for free, right?  Well, right now Lillie has a subscriber list of nearly 300, as large as its ever been.

You know what they say - the first bag's free ...

Any questions?


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


This week's featured poem is from Lilliput Review, #165, from November 2008.  This fine translation of the magnificent Yannis Ritsos is by Scott King.  It speaks for itself.




The Shadow of Birds: 41
  I'm not listening to you—he says—
  I find the hill beautiful
  the tree beautiful
  the shadow of birds on the grass
  and myself
  beautiful—he says—
  in the water or in the mirror
  whatever you say
  my part isn't diminished
  in the river
  or in the rose.
Yannis Ritsos
translated by Scott King











dewdrops forming--
when might I become
grass...or a tree?
Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue




best,
Don



Send a single haiku for the Wednesday Haiku feature.  Here's how.

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 110 songs

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Thursday notes ...



A couple of quick Thursday notes ...

The new issue of Simply Haiku, Summer 2011, is up online in which I have a review of a collection of contemporary death awareness poems, Dreams Wander On.   The formatting seems a bit off here and there but the message is spot-on.  My tardiness in delivering the article may be the cause, for which I'm bowing my head at this very moment.  This is as fine a collection of haiku and related forms as there is on any subject and those of you who know me know I don't say that lightly; definitely check it out.

Salamander Cove has reprinted a poem from Past All Traps amidst a fine selection of work by the likes of Bill Knott, Ed Baker, and Tom Montag, among others, all of which may be found here.

Finally, there have been some really wonderful poems posted from the new edition of tiny words, one of my favorite haiku sites.  Here are two examples, with link backs to the site:



each
butterfly
carrying
spring
 
(click through url for haiga)
-C. P. Harrison
http://tinyurl.com/6kyujm7 






waiting for the sheep to pass    a skylark's song


-Sandra Simpson
http://tinyurl.com/694f78o





And one from the Master:




lured by the butterfly
hairpin...
little butterfly
Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue





best,
Don




Send a single haiku for the Wednesday Haiku feature.  Here's how.

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 110 songs


Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Wednesday Haiku, #27: sanjuktaa






Wednesday Haiku, Week #27




serving hot chai
in earthen pots-
the curve of her hips

     sanjuktaa










earthen teapot
ah! all full
with autumn dew
Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue








best,
Don




Send a single haiku for the Wednesday Haiku feature.  Here's how.

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 110 songs

Sunday, July 17, 2011

"Somewhere (from West Side Story)": Issa's Sunday Service, #110





This week's Sunday Service selection is something of anomaly, catching Tom Waits in an embryonic period when his style was still developing with what is, for me, mixed results.  The song is "Somewhere" (from West Side Story) and, on paper, this is a marriage made in Beat heaven.

Maybe it's me but the deep irony that is the juxtaposition of the cracked down and out Waits' persona and this classic Romeo and Juliet inspired tune just doesn't quite connect.  Am I wrong?

Since I've evoked Shakespeare, or rather Sondheim, Robbins, Laurents, Bernstein, and Waits have, here's a little something entitled "Romeo is Bleeding" from the Waits' album that also has "Somewhere," Blue Valentine.



Ok, we can't do this halfway.  Let's let 'em take it home:



Um, one step too far - West Side Story (the Horror Trailer):




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


This week's featured poem comes from Lilliput Review #81, first published in August 1996.  A little fable, speaking of horror, with a very hard kernel of truth.  Just look around; Lyn Stefenhagens has.



What Every Woman Knows
  Eve knew.  Helen knew
  what every woman knows.

  Every garden grows
  some bay, some rue,
  a line of yew;
  one blemished rose,
  one shroud of crows.
     Lyn Stefenhagens







will I be the next one
you caw over?
crows

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue




best,
Don



Send a single haiku for the Wednesday Haiku feature.  Here's how.

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 110 songs

Friday, July 15, 2011

Friday Morning with Po-Chu-i



For any number of years, the book The White Pony: An Anthology of Chinese Literature has sat leisurely at my bedside for me to dip into at fancy and whim.  What this approach to an anthology loses in continuity is made up for with the element of surprise: I pick up the volume and am on occasion taken back by the power and wisdom of much of the work found there.   Edited by Robert Payne and originally published in 1947, it's pocket book size somewhat makes up for its old school approach (I can't tell you how many doctor and dental appointments its accompanied me to, only to find its way back to the pile beside my bed).  Here's a little beauty I ran across a few nights ago:


The Harp
   I lay my harp on the curved table,
   Sitting there idly, filled with emotions.
   Why should I trouble to play?
   A breeze will come and sweep the strings.
                  Po Chu-i
                  translated by Chang Ti



This translation's virtues are many, not the least of which is the ambiguity of the 2nd line.   The ennui here should certainly appeal to most poets and just as assuredly describes the universal human condition.








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


This week's featured poem comes from Lilliput Review, #164, originally published in July 2008.  By the outstanding UK poet David Lindley, whose work has been featured many times over the years, this little is a reminder about something we who are not bodhisattvas are constantly doomed to repeat.




in imitation of a poem by Ishikawa Jozan

   Cherry blossom scattered
   on the lawn at evening.
   The spring and I
   both feel old.
   I can't say
   you betrayed me.
   When the blossom
   was on the tree
   it was I who
   forgot to look.
David Lindley







cherry blossoms scatter
snap! the buck
twists off his horns
Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue




best,
Don



Send a single haiku for the Wednesday Haiku feature.  Here's how.

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 109 songs

 

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Bastille Day: Judy Collins and "Marat"



Happy Bastille Day, for the revolution in us all ...









also waiting
for the cuckoo...
a fool
Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue




best,
Don




Send a single haiku for the Wednesday Haiku feature.  Here's how.

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 109 songs


Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Wednesday Haiku, #26: Barbara A. Taylor

Photo by Jean-Pol Granmont



Wednesday Haiku, Week #26


 
a ray of sun
spears through
the dolmen
                                               Barbara A. Taylor

(first published in Solstice thread at Sketchbook, 2010)







the cool breeze
a gift from Buddha...
pine by the grave

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue






best,
Don




Send a single haiku for the Wednesday Haiku feature.  Here's how.

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 109 songs

 

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Low Ghost / Six Gallery Joint Reading, Modern Formations, 7-8-11

Photos by small press poet, novelist, essayist, photographer, librarian and impresario Karen Lillis, from the combined Low Ghost / Six Gallery reading on Friday July 3rd. For the curious and those unable to attend ...

Don Wentworth



Kris Collins - Low Ghost Press



Lucy Goubert



Jason Baldringer



Margaret Bashaar



Bob Pajich






Mark Spitzer







Thanks to all, especially featured reader Mark Spitzer (with guest appearance by Bigfoot), Low Ghost Press, Nathan of Six Gallery Press, Jen of ModernFormations (celebrating their 10th anniversary with a fab retrospective), and a enthusiastic attentive crowd.




Morning glory opens
to anything,
even you
                                                                     ~ dw








old pond--
please, you go first
frog jumping
Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue





best,

Don


Send a single haiku for the Wednesday Haiku feature. Here's how.

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 109 songs

Sunday, July 10, 2011

The Oxford Comma: Issa's Sunday Service, #109







Never trust a lead that will be viral in about oh 5 seconds ago but, of course, a hack writer like me can't resist:


Vampire Weekend, that catchy, hooky, hip little rock band with the name that slid under about oh 5 seconds before the whole vamp thing went viral, obviously never has. This little puppy speaks all for itself.

Though one might ask how do you slip a reference to Dharamsala into a laid back, reggae tinged, pop confection? Why, just like this!


Oxford Comma
Who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma?
I've seen those English dramas too
They're cruel
So if there's any other way
To spell the word
It's fine with me, with me

Why would you speak to me that way
Especially when I always said that I
Haven't got the words for you
All your diction dripping with disdain
Through the pain
I always tell the truth

Who gives a fuck about an Oxford climber?
I climbed to Dharamsala too
I did
I met the highest lama
His accent sounded fine
To me, to me

Check your handbook
It's no trick
Take the chapstick
Put it on your lips
Crack a smile
Adjust my tie
Know your boyfriend, unlike other guys

Why would you lie about how much coal you have?
Why would you lie about something dumb like that?
Why would you lie about anything at all?
First the window, then it's to the wall
Lil' Jon, he always tells the truth

Check your passport
It's no trick
Take the chapstick
Put it on your lips
Crack a smile
Adjust my tie
Know your butler, unlike other guys
Why would you lie about how much coal you have?
Why would you lie about something dumb like that?
Why would you lie about anything at all?
First the window, then it's through the wall
Why would you tape my conversations?
Show your paintings
At the United Nations
Lil' Jon, he always tells the truth






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

This week's feature poem from the Lilliput archive comes from issue #82, originally published in August 1996. Enjoy.




Reality
reality is
the metal all
the maya is
made from
Steven M. Thomas












in a dewdrop world
singing of dewdrops...
summer cicada
Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue





best,

Don


Send a single haiku for the Wednesday Haiku feature. Here's how.

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 109 songs

Saturday, July 9, 2011

Mutts Goes Plop ...



Today's Mutts was too good not to share.

As is the daily Issa posting from David G. Lanoue:





adding themselves
to the bird's nest...
cherry blossoms

tori no su ni tsukuri komareshi sakura kana
.鳥の巣に作り込れし桜哉

Issa,
1808 trans. by David G. Lanoue






best,

Don


Send a single haiku for the Wednesday Haiku feature. Here's how.

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 108 songs

Friday, July 8, 2011

Across the Universe: Ginsberg, Shelley, Lennon




I ran across this video around the blogosphere somewhere - on Ron Silliman's blog, perhaps, or the Allen Ginsberg Project - and was really taken with it.  An all access cable show, buried deep in the Internet archive, this hasn't gotten much play and it deserves to.  This is around the time - the 90s - when Allen was very taken with song and some of these work better than others.  Some fine work here and, of course, it's Allen.

What really struck me in this show was his remarks regarding Shelley which just set off a sparkling of synapses (synapsi?), as he quoted the following lines from Ode to the West Wind:


Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!



I immediately, for some reason, thought of John Lennon's remarkable song "Across the Universe."   Ginsberg's take here on shedding ambition and changing the world, on poetry's place in that world, threads these two apparently unrelated pieces together for me.  Here's how he puts it:

"I keep thinking there must be some mighty rhythm with the right words that would penetrate through all consciousness and wake earth up to its terrific non-transcendent living possibility of having a continuing destiny."

"Doesn't everybody have that?  ... I did, since I was a kid. ... Or penetrate through the world with some great song, cry, mantra, or poem like Shelley (in Ode to the West Wind)...


Here's the Shelley and Lennon, side by side.



ODE TO THE WEST WIND by: Percy Bysshe Shelley
I. 

O Wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
 
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
 
The wingèd seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the spring shall blow
 
Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odors plain and hill:
 
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!
 
II.
Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion,
Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,
 
Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread
On the blue surface of thine airy surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head
 
Of some fierce Mænad, even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith's height,
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge
 
Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,
Vaulted with all thy congregated might
 
Of vapors, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail, will burst: oh hear!
 
III.
 
Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,
 
Beside a pumice isle in Baiæ's bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave's intenser day,
 
All overgrown with azure moss and flowers
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
For whose path the Atlantic's level powers
 
Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know
 
Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: oh, hear!
 
IV.
 
If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share
 
The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O uncontrollable! if even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be
 
The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skyey speed
Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne'er have striven
 
As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
 
A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed
One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.
 
V.
 
Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is;
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
 
Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
 
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of this verse,
 
Scatter, as from an extinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unwakened earth
 
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind, 
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
 
 
 
Across the Universe by John Lennon
 
Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup,
They slither while they pass, they slip away across the universe
Pools of sorrow, waves of joy are drifting through my open mind,
Possessing and caressing me.
Jai guru deva om
Nothing's gonna change my world,
Nothing's gonna change my world.

Images of broken light which dance before me like a million eyes,
That call me on and on across the universe,
Thoughts meander like a restless wind inside a letter box they
Tumble blindly as they make their way
Across the universe
Jai guru deva om
Nothing's gonna change my world,
Nothing's gonna change my world.

Sounds of laughter shades of earth are ringing
Through my open views inviting and inciting me
Limitless undying love which shines around me like a
Million suns, it calls me on and on
Across the universe
Jai guru deva om
Nothing's gonna change my world,
Nothing's gonna change my world.
 

Thanks, Allen, as always, for that incredible mind.


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

This week's featured poem comes from Lilliput Review, #163, July 2008.   The poem is from one Beat poet to another: Diane di Prima on Joanne Kyger:




   Poetry Reading, Santa Cruz
slats of light on Joanne's hair
don't move as she dances
reading her poem
       Diane di Prima









plum blossom scent--
through a needle's eye
the light
Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue






best,

Don


Send a single haiku for the Wednesday Haiku feature.  Here's how.

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 108 songs

Thursday, July 7, 2011

An Evening with Mark Spitzer featuring Six Gallery Press & Low Ghost Poets


An Evening with Mark Spitzer featuring 
Six Gallery Press & Low Ghost Poets


Time: Friday, July 8 · 8:00pm - 11:00pm

Location:
ModernFormations
4919 Penn Ave.
Pittsburgh, PA


A Six Gallery Press & Low Ghost Press Presentation!

When: Friday, July 8th
Time: 8pm
Where: ModernFormations Gallery 4919 Penn Ave.
...Cover: $5

Join us for an exclusive local engagement with novelist, poet, and translator Mark Spitzer. Mark Spitzer, novelist, poet, essayist and literary translator, grew up in Minneapolis where he earned his Bachelor's degree at the University of Minnesota in 1990. He then moved to the Rockies, where he earned his Master's in Creative Writing from the University of Colorado. After living on the road for some time, he found himself in Paris, as Writer in Residence for three years at the bohemian bookstore Shakespeare and Company, where he translated French criminals and misanthropes. In 1997 he moved to Louisiana, became Assistant Editor of Andrei Codrescu's legendary lit journal Exquisite Corpse, and earned an MFA from Louisiana State University. After teaching Creative Writing and Lit for five years at Truman State University, he’s now a professor of Writing at the University of Central Arkansas, where he is the Editor of Toad Suck Review (toadsuckreview.org). Mark's novel "Chode" and collection of essays "Riding the Unit: Selected Nonfiction, 1994-2004" were published by Six Gallery Press. More info at http://www.sptzr.net/

Also featuring readings from local luminaries:

Don Wentworth - publisher of Lilliput Review; author of the poetry collection Past All Traps.

Jason Baldinger - co-author of the poetry collection The Whiskey Rebellion.

Margaret Bashaar - author of the poetry collection Barefoot and Listening, published by Tilt Press in 2009. Her second chapbook, Letters from Room 27 of the Grand Midway Hotel, is forthcoming from Blood Pudding Press. She does performance art and acting with the cabaret troupe The TypewriterGirls.

Bob Pajich - has a chapbook of poems called Everyone, Exquisite published and is currently the managing editor and lead news writer for the world's largest magazine dedicated to the game of poker: Card Player. A new collection of poems is forthcoming from Low Ghost Press.

Chris Ammons - Burgh Bon Vivant.

Kristofer Collins - editor and publisher of Low Ghost Press. His most recent collection of poems, Last Call was published by Speed & Briscoe.



The sweet magnolia
bows to all creation —
& you were saying?








to the old woman
doing laundry, the evening
willow bows
Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue







best,
Don





Send a single haiku for the Wednesday Haiku feature.  Here's how.

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 108 songs



Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Wednesday Haiku, #25: Jose Araguz




Wednesday Haiku, Week #25




Here --
what the sun
says to the flowers
Jose Araguz

 







at the sound of the sunset
bell...
wildflowers
Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue




Photograph by G. Stinson





best,
Don


Send a single haiku for the Wednesday Haiku feature.  Here's how.

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 108 songs

Sunday, July 3, 2011

Neal Cassady: Issa's Sunday Service, #108





This is at least the fourth time Neal Cassady has made an appearance on Issa's Sunday Service (previously here, here, and here) and that says boatloads about lots of things (he also got a mention on the Sunday Service here, though the song wasn't about him).

For the second week in a row, I'm featuring a song by a group I hadn't known 10 days before. Weather Underground I somehow stumbled on, possibly on youtube, but how I couldn't say. They are obscure enough to not even have a bio on allmusic, just some cursory info on their self-released discs, When I Was a Soldier and Psalms & Shanties, the last being where "Neal Cassady" comes from.

I particularly like the pacing of this song. Which got me to thinking about the musical approach of each of the bands to their enigmatic subject - is their any relation between Aztec Two-Step, King Crimson, the Grateful Dead, and The Weather Underground, musically, in how they portray Mr. C.?

Here they are all together:








And, because serendipity is the grease that works the wheel of magic, after putting this together, I stumbled across this article in The Guardian about a famous photo which I was familiar with but had no idea was of Cassady.

Photo by Lawrence Schiller




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This week's featured poem comes from Lilliput Review #83, November 1996. Dream on.




for Melanie
   I called to confirm the calling dream,
   the dream, the dream, the calling dream.
            Kyle Christopher




(While typing this poem, this song came on the random mix of, oh, 14,000 or so songs.  Never get in the way of a runaway train ...)












calling down--
from deep in the well
an answer
Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue



- Don


Send a single haiku for the Wednesday Haiku feature.  Here's how.

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 107 songs