Alan Catlin: Only the Dead Know Albany - Small Press Friday

Alan Catlin is one the finest practitioners of the the lyrical arts on the small press scene over the last 20 years. His work seems ubiquitous, though his style varies according to its subject. Some of his finest work may be seen in his ekphrastic poems, such as the volume entitled Effects of Sunlight in the Fog, which I reviewed here back in 2009.  I've also had the pleasure of publishing a handful of Block Island poem from the pen of Catlin, perfect little 'line drawings' of life at world's end.

Another phase of his poetry, for which he is more well-known, might be thought of as his anti-lyrical lyrical work, of which the volume Only the Dead Know Albany (Sunnyoutside Press, Buffalo, NY), is a premiere example. Like Dave Church's poems, which came from his everyday experiences as a cabbie, Alan's long-time stint as a bartender in the hardscrabble town of Albany, New York, frame the everyday working class lives of desperation so many people lead.

I've done time in many a town where there is a bar on every corner and two in between: Bayonne and Highlands, NJ, and Pittsburgh, PA to name just a few. Many an old school Irish or Slavic or Italian neighborhood, where constituents voted for a congressman currently doing time for corruption (because he took care of your kid when he got in hot water, or squared your parking ticket, or made your little neighborhood problem go away), could at one time be found in northern industrial cities (think Albany, Buffalo, Detroit, Pittsburgh etc.), some of which, having long gone to seed, resprouted in the last gentrified years of 20th century America. 

It's one thing to reel off a couple of Jimmy Breslin-style wiseguy sentences about towns like these, another altogether to capture them in a poem. Alan Catlin nails it time and time again. 

If you are having trouble conjuring up Dante's 7th circle, no problem: Alan Catlin's Albany will do very nicely, indeed.  Here's the title poem:


Only the Dead Know Albany

and the side alleys, cock-fought
streets, high-stakes crap games
decided by a blade and a motorcycle
chain, brass knuckles and steel-toed
boots; row-housed tenements blocks
long, Clinton Avenue to Arbor Hill,
where no trees bloomed, buildings in
full flame, cops and robbers gaming
the Man, the Black Maria and a banshee
wail long summer nights before
Urban Renewal razed the earth
and only the dead knew Albany. 


All these seem visions of a past, conjuring a present not much improved:


Queen's Gambit

The opening line
always was, "Got
a light?" The ones
that did leaned in 
close as she cupped
her hands around
the flame, as she
said how much
the full ride would
cost for a bareback
trip with frills and she
had lots of takers
even if she looked
to be a half-dead
teen angel whose 
eyes were as hard
as her grave marker;
one date already
carved, the other
three-quarters
of the way done. 


Catlin's poems don't glorify the hard old times, they shine a light full in the face of existence - this isn't about revering outlaws, this is about surviving.



Bus Stop Corner of Lark and Central Avenue, Albany, NY

He was holding onto support
of the bus shelter bench as
if his life depended upon it
and maybe, in a way it did.
The cops in his face telling 
him to let go, get a move on,
give everyone a break, hesitant
to use force, to touch this more-
than-aromatic bum, more pissed on
than dangerous, hesitant to use force
with so many onlookers making
mental notes, their voices just so
much more mental static in a world
gone seriously crazy, his drink-
addled brain emitting a kind of
drunkard's lingua franca only
like-minded derelicts could 
understand finally managing
one last coherent phrase before
the cops give him over to mental
health gendarmes in lab coats and
latex gloves, "You must understand,
I don't know who I am!"

Only the Dead Know Albany is a 32 page chapbook with one heavy dose of reality after another, captured by a talented eye and a sensitive demeanor, a sketchbook of circle after circle, adding up to exactly we know what. The book is available directly from the publisher, sunnyoutside press; if not, there is always that giant evil online warehouse, but, since this is Small Press Friday, I'll let you find your way there on your own.

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

city life--
even melting snow
costs money

 Issa

 translated by David G. Lanoue 

best,
Don 

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Kenneth Rexroth: Sky Sea Birds Trees Earth House Beasts Flowers

I ran across this beautiful little Kenneth Rexroth book, Sky Sea Birds Trees Earth House Beast Flowers, in a local Pittsburgh used and rare bookshop, Caliban. The book comes from Unicorn Press, which I've written about before previously in a review of Hyakunin Isshu: 100 Poems by 100 Poets, back in April of this year. You can find plenty of info on this, one of America's finest small presses, back in that post, so I'll skip the background here.

This particular volume was published in 1971, is 1 of 375 trade copies and contains 11 poems with 13 pieces of art, all done by Rexroth himself. The poems, as well as the brushwork, are all Eastern inflected.

Slowly the moon rises
Over the quiet sea.
Slowly the face of my beloved
Forms in my mind.

The parallel feel of the two sets of two lines has the sensibility of haiku, minus the denouement. The comparison of memory to nature is an interesting one; there seems also to be an implied parallel as to time duration of the two events. Any poem that brings the human into nature, either in contrast or, even better, in harmony, has my close attention, as does this one.

Spring puddles give way
To young grass.
In the garden,
Willow catkins
Change to singing birds.

This might be easily characterized as waka, though the form is more specifically reminiscent of tanka, without the overt romantic element. Whatever it is called is not particularly relevant, except perhaps for the scholar. Here we are completely immersed in nature, presented with examples of the myriad changes which happen right before our eyes and yet so often go unseen. What I most admire here is that Rexroth has captured the miraculous quality of these changes by making them feel almost magical.

Of course that is just what it is, a miracle, a bit of natural magic, right before our eyes, which is seen so many times without seeing that it has become "ordinary" enough to ignore

A dawn in a tree of birds.
Another,
And then another.

This may be my favorite poem of the collection. Is it a haiku? Seen from one angle, not really, from another most definitely. How so? If seen as a series of days, it is closer in spirit to the previous poem, which takes place over a long period of time, hence not a haiku (if capturing a single moment is part of your haiku requirement). Seen from the other side, however, this could be a series of immediate moments, contiguous, taking place in mere seconds, as the rising light first hits one bird, than another, than another.

In fact, it doesn't have to be light at all directly hitting the tree - it could be the light breaking on the horizon and each individual bird's response, one after the other after the other, in song.

Yes, I like this poem very much.

Past midnight,
In the dark,
Under the winter stars,
Tendrils of ice
Creep through the duckweed.

This is another special poem, tanka-esque in form, which thrusts a human right in the middle of natural things. This poem has a bit of an ominous quality; it is past midnight, dark without moonlight, and our sense of hearing allows us to hear something creeping through the duckweed. Though the hearer realizes it is ice creeping and not some predator, still the tone of "creep" feels foreboding. The beauty here is that, though not a sentient being in our usual sense of understanding, ice does creep, so Rexroth has not committed any anthropomorphic hocus-pocus, something which would immediately turn me off.

In addition, ice creeping may have a truly ominous quality for one exposed to the elements without proper clothing and food. It may be winter that is doing the creeping, which may be something properly feared.

The years pass.
The generations
Of birds pass too.
You must watch carefully.
The same towhees and jays
Seem to have been in the same
Places
To thousands of generations
Of men.

This fifth poem captures some of the aspects of the poems already noted, particularly the passage of time. Thousands of generations of men pass through this poem, yet the poet admonishes his readers to watch carefully in the moment to see all time pass before you, a perfect conflation of eternity and the now.

One might almost say eternity in a moment: satori.

Fine, fine, fine stuff. Copies of this amazing little hand-sewn chapbook can be had much cheaper than I paid for it ($15) or you can pay a lot more. It's only money and this is only poetry (and art).

I'm thinking either way it's a bargain.  I know I got off cheap.

One of 13 pieces of art

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

This week's poem from the Lilliput archive comes from issue #102, January 1999.    Once again Alan Catlin's painterly eye is in evidence, a master at work.

The Poet's Room

  Frayed chairs, shadows
  curve from windows
  mirrors silent as footprints
  covered by dew.

                  Alan Catlin

looking younger than me
the scarecrow casts
his shadow

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,

Don

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"Don't Fear the Reaper": Issa's Sunday Service, #115

Buck Dharma ,created by G. Lorbes

I don't think we've had too many real blockbuster songs on the Sunday Service, but "Don't Fear the Reaper" definitely fits the bill. It's literary connections with Stephen King are well documented. So iconic is it that, until I heard it again recently (it tends to pop up on summer rock radio), I'd forgotten about the "Romeo and Juliet" allusion, which is what puts it square in the sights of the this ongoing series.

A song essentially about how love conquers death and written by Blue Oyster Cult's lead guitarist, Buck Dharma (Donald Roeser), the opening 5 lines should be of interest to those familiar with Eastern verse:

All our times have come
Here but now they're gone
Seasons don't fear the reaper
Nor do the wind, the sun or the rain
We can be like they are

That's a sentiment that even the classic haiku masters wouldn't argue with and the chord struck here might be universal enough to explain the song's initial success and persistent staying power. "Romeo and Juliet," it turns out not surprisingly, is one of the most persistent allusion in rock: this is the 4th song in the list that refers to it (& there are more to come, I'm sure - suggest one and get the two current issues of Lilliput Review free) - here and here and here are the previous three.

So as not to give short shrift to the original, here is a fine excerpt of one of the best, most popular versions of the play ever produced. The intensity of Zefferilli's two young actors captures it all:







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


This week's selection from the Lilliput archive #76, way back in the land of January 1996. Alan Catlin is something of a master poet, here singing of another master of art.

Poem Inspired by Hokusai

Hokusai
sketches the whole
of the earth
emerging from the sky.

Alan Catlin

mountain's red leaves
the setting sun returns
to the sky

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

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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

Basho: The Complete Haiku

The unofficial two month Basho push came to end this week when I finished Basho: The Complete Haiku, translated with intro, bio and notes by Jane Reichhold. All this began some time back when I was contacted by Tomoe Sumi of Kodansha America in response to postings I'd been doing about various editions of Basho I'd been reading (in preparation for a future Modest Proposal Chapbook). At the time, she offered me a reading copy of Basho: The Complete Haiku. Because I already had it, I declined but Tomoe suggested she could send a copy along in any case and I could give it away to a reader.

And the Basho Haiku Challenge was born. The to-be-published anthology from challenge submissions would never have happened without her generosity and I want to thank her again.

I'm happy to say that Basho: The Complete Haiku is everything one would anticipate and more. For the dedicated reader and fan of Basho, it's all here: 1011 haiku, the complete output of a relatively taciturn haiku master (in comparison, Issa wrote over 20,000 haiku), all with accompanying notes, from a few words to paragraph length explications. The presentation method is chronological, as it should be, and divided up into 7 phases (as opposed to the standard 5 phases: see Makoto Ueda's Matsuo Basho) and each section is preceded by biographical info important to the given period. I found this method extremely helpful. To have presented the entire biography in the forward matter would have removed an immediacy that deepens understanding and necessitated much flipping back and forth. The appendices and back matter are a real bonus, including sections on haiku techniques, a chronology of Basho's life, a glossary of literary terms and a selected, succinct bibliography. For biographical detail, Reichhold seems to lean heavily on Makoto Ueda's seminal biography (which I'm reading now - ok, so the push isn't entirely over) but that's to be expected.

Down to the crux, however: the poems themselves. These translations veer away from the often disasterous academic all-inclusive approach. The translations are unique, lyrical, and eminently readable without dumbing down for the English reader. In general, there is a stripped down, less is more approach, somewhat reminiscent of the translation work of Lucien Styrk and Robert Hass. One thing this collection solidified for me, the non-academic reader as opposed to Japanese literary scholar, is how much I don't know and never really will about the original intent of what I feel to be a majority of these poems (and by extension, any translations from any of the haiku masters, including beloved Issa). The notes of both this Reichhold edition and of the Landis Barnhill edition I reviewed previously are what really brought this important point home and made me think long and hard about myself as reader.

The conclusion I've drawn from all this "thunking" is simply that the poems that connect, the ones that get through to a novice like myself, are those that have a universal appeal that transcends translation, technique, and cultural idiosyncrasies. I'm talking the spirit of haiku here and perhaps the universal impetus to write haiku in the first place. A speaking to the human condition, who we are, and what we do (oh, Gauguin, bless you for your question mark). But wait, aren't haiku supposed to be objective not subjective, speaking to nature and leaving out the personal? Well, yes, this transcendent spirit I'm speaking of includes that and more. This concentration on nature is the where of the who and what we do: our place in the world, who we are being defined by what we are.

Ah, but enough of my personal revelation. On to the poems or, to paraphrase the incandescently beautiful Joe Strummer, how about some music now, eh?

Of the 1000 plus haiku, I marked 45 or so that grabbed me, held me down, and said, ok, what (or, more precisely, how) do you think now? Previously, I'd selected 35 for further review from the 700 plus Barnhill Landis edition, so the proportion is consistent, realizing that he was being selective (i.e. picking the best). The Reichhold edition confirms for me that the later work was the finest, Basho getting better and better with time. Here are a few of those 45. When possible, I've tried to select haiku not highlighted in previous postings from other editions in order to give a fuller portrait of the poet.



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


autumn night
dashed into bits
in conversation

pine and cedar
to admire the wind
smell the sound

pine wind
needles falling on the water's
cool sound

already bent
the bamboo waits for snow
what a sight

glistening dew
not spilling from bush clover
still it sways

a morning glory
this also is not
my friend

a traveler's heart
it also should look like
chinquapin flowers

leave aside
literary talents
tree peony

year after year
the cherry tree nourished by
fallen blossoms

path of the sun
the hollyhock leans into
early summer rain

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


A couple of other things of note this week, via the always informative, encyclopedic Ron Silliman blog: first, Bill Knott's take on a lesser known Wordsworth sonnet (a distinctly un-haiku like experience, actually very different for Wordsworth, who sometimes has a very Eastern flavor and remains my favorite of Romantic poets) and, second, the fact that a huge chunk of the Outlaw Bible of American Poetry is available via google books (don't tell anybody, pass it on). If you wish your wherewithal tested or your game raised to another level (without the pain of academia), I highly recommend Bill Knott's not poetry blog. Bill also offers almost all of his poetry for free pdf download, an amazingly generous and prescient idea.

Cover by Peter Magliocco

Today's Lilliput issue from the back archives is #69 from June, 1995. The further back we go in time, the, er, odder the experience for me. Perhaps more on this later. For now, enjoy.



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


After rum and cola

While walking inconspicuously
through this shabby cliché,
I am brushed back
by a long
black
metaphor
that splashed mud
onto my haptic shoes
and chases me back to Technicolor.

Thomas Brand

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

Now, at break of day,
A cliché coldly peers out
From behind mountains.

Travis Gray

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




Midnight Footnote to Lovemaking

The snail's path across
our bedroom windowpane wakes
us with its shrieking.

Michael Newell

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

Sleep

Sleep happens outside
this window where
white groping fingers
of a dream grasp
and are as still as
frozen beaks of birds
pinned to earth,
tugging at words
beneath the worms

Alan Catlin

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




in the mortar
of the city's
walls,
flute & whips
sing their song

Norman Schiffman

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

Crucifixion Revision

Father, forgive them
even though they know exactly
what they damn well do.

David Denny

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




¶no matter how many prayer flags
-they go out and hang upon the face of it
-it still be the beast.

Scarecrow

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

¶a friend hands me a book
-more shit to carry when we go into exile.

Scarecrow

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

Finally, contributor copies of the new issues, #'s 165 and 166, went out the beginning of this week. Subscriber copies will begin to go out in two weeks and will take about 6 weeks all in all to get to everyone. There is a new Modest Proposal Chapbook to talk about also, so, no fear, I have yet to run out of things to blab about.



till next time,
Don

Tapping the Barometer, Why Buddha Sat Under the Tree, and Joe Pesci in Pittsburgh

The sad news of recent days is that the death of Hayden Carruth is reverberating through various poetic communities (no, I don't think there is only one, in practice or theory). Ed Baker was kind enough to send along notice, and point to a poem well worth sharing.

Agenda At 74
Tap barometer, burn trash,
put out seed for birds, tap
barometer, go to market
for doughnuts and Dutch
Masters, feed cat, write
President, tap barometer,
take baby aspirin, write
congressman, nap, watch
Bills vs. Patriots, tap
barometer, go to post
office and ask Diane if
it's cold enough for her,
go to diner and say "hi,
babe" to Mazie, go to
barber shop and read

Sports Illustrated, go
home, take a load off,
tap barometer, go to
liquor store for jug
(Gallo chablis), go
home, pee, etc., sweep
cellar stairs (be careful!),
write letter to editor,
count dimes, count quarters,
tap the fucking barometer ...

Hayden Carruth

This so perfectly captures a day in the life of an aging poet that it almost takes the breathe away with its understated quality and matter-of-fact resonance.

Beautiful.

Yesterday's poetry appreciation session went well, though not quite as I expected. Part of an overall package of programs for lifelong learners, the general attendance had been between 15 and 17; yesterday, there were 9. So it was cozy and comfortable. After a half hour intro, we got into the poems and folks didn't quite respond to the questions I'd prepared to stimulate discussion, so the session transmuted into more traditional class, with me riding herd all the way. Folks were much more comfortable with this and, as I pointed out various aspects of the poems (in a declarative rather than inquisitive manner), they began to respond and responded very well. Since I noticed three faces from last year, I didn't want to repeat poems I'd covered then so asked them where to start. One person wanted to hear the Ted Kooser poem ("For You, Friend"), so I told them I had two poems to lead into it and proceeded to show them how one poem directly and indirectly influenced the other. They were taken with the similarity of imagery (which the relationships are built on) and we just took off from there. They were enthused enough with the three poems ("Donal Og - Broken Vows," "Funeral Blues" by Auden, and "For You, Friend), that I decided to stretch it and go for the Shakespeare "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day"), which really spun out well from the Kooser. They loved it, particularly when I read Howard Moss's poem of the same name:

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Who says you're like one of the dog days?
You're nicer. And better.
Even in May, the weather can be gray,
And a summer sub-let doesn't last forever.
Sometimes the suns too hot;
Sometime it is not.
Who can stay young forever?
People break their necks or just drop dead!
But you? Never!
If there's just one condensed reader left
Who can figure out the abridged alphabet,
-----After you're dead and gone,
-----In this poem you'll live on!

I did this in my best "drop dead" Jersey accent and they loved it - when I heard the unrestrained laughter, I knew they were enjoying poetry and, so, I'd accomplished what I came for.

One of the more enlightening moments for me came during the questions that were asked as we were wrapping things up. One person in particular asked why is it that many times when she hears poets read, on places like the NewsHour, they just sound so flat and they drone on and on. As I paused to answer, everyone in the room was either vocally assenting or nodding their heads at this observation and I realized poets are very often their own worst enemies. My response was that I'd chosen works I love and greatly admire and those kinds of works for me contain a great deal of emotion that needs to be conveyed. They are works I believe in.

Everyone seems to lament the fact that no one reads poetry anymore and yet, when we have the opportunity to put our best faces forward, we drone on and on and on. And it is not just a matter of entertainment, though this too is a factor. A woman I ran into at the library an hour after class stopped me to say how much she enjoyed the session and how moved she always is by Auden's "Funeral Blues," to the point she has difficulty listening to it, yet finds it immensely powerful even in the extreme emotion it invokes. She noted how she could never have expressed those emotions in words yet the poet had gotten it perfectly. I told her the old adage was true: we look to our poets to speak for us, they give us our own voice.

That, friends, is poetry, to be touched deeply, to be moved permanently.

If you write something, you better believe in it. And if you believe in it, when you read it spin it like the bottle you want to land on just the right spot ...

In other news, the Basho Haiku Challenge entries will be accepted up until midnight this evening. The response has been quite amazing and I'm very pleased. I finished up David Landis Barnhill's translations, Bashō's Haiku, and had intended to report on that today but am running out of space and time, so I'll postpone it until next week. Suffice to say that of the over 700 haiku, I marked 35 that grabbed me.

Eventually, when I run out of back issues to feature, I've got a couple of ideas about featuring different work here on a weekly basis. One of the ideas I mentioned previously is to showcase work from the books on the Near Perfect list (157 and counting). Though I'm not going to begin that now, I ran across a video of one of the poets on the list, the amazing and powerful and moving Etheridge Knight. Here is a video rendition of his poem, "The Idea of Ancestry."







This week's featured back issue is a special one, issue #75, from January 1996. As a milestone number, I came up with the idea to solicit poems, all to be entitled "Why Did Buddha Sit Under the Tree." I received lots of work and featured 14 poems in the issue, 13 entitled "Why Did Buddha Sit Under the Tree" (the 14th was called "The Joke" - and that's another story). So, here's a handful of the best, including the "Winner":




Why Did Buddha Sit Under the Tree
there is no tree
no Buddha
& no contest.

please go home.

C Ra McGuirt
"Winning"poem

Why Did Buddha Sit Under the Tree
Because.
Because he is.
Because he is waiting.
Because he is waiting for you.

Evans Burn

Why Did Buddha Sit Under the Tree
To learn that
the words of
the prophets are
written on
subway walls.

Alan Catlin

Why Did Buddha Sit Under the Tree
When you read Nazi books
why do you always turn
straight to the pictures?

Noelle Kocot

Why Did Buddha Sit Under the Tree
Buddha did not sit
under the tree.
The tree stood
next to Buddha.

Laura Kim

Why Did Buddha Sit Under the Tree
When two or more are gathered in my name

Marty Campbell

Best of luck and thanks to everyone participating in the Basho Haiku Contest,

Don

Basho, Burns, Brautigan, Amy Lowell, and Jacko?

Cover art by John Bennett

Busy, busy times, so posts for the next couple of weeks will be sporadic and brief. The Basho Haiku Challenge is off to a great start, with lots of entries coming in. Thanks very much to Poet Hound, Haiku and Horror , Blogging Along Tobacco Road, and trout fishing in minnesota for getting the word out. I'm sure there are some others, too, that I don't know about, but thanks all.

So, keep the haiku coming in, folks. Instructions may be found at the Basho Haiku Challenge link, above.

And keep spreading the word.

As alluded to above, not much progress on any fronts. I haven't read any fiction in over a month and I am seriously jonesing. When I see the piles as I go room to room, you can't imagine the variety of voices I hear calling to me from every corner: classic, modern, sci-fi, horror, any damn thing. They all want to be read and I want to read them all and the discipline is killing me.

I continue to read, however, for both the haiku challenge and a future Modest Proposal project, two different translations of Basho, one at work and one at home. At home, I'm reading the Jane Reichhold Basho: the Complete Haiku, which is the prize for the challenge and, I'm happy to say, I'm beginning to warm to it a bit. All the translations I've read so far have had one thing to recommend them: specifically, Basho himself. This may seem ludicrous but what I mean specifically is that I seem to be encountering different aspects of the same poet in the different translations. A poem I loved in one translation, I'm indifferent to the next and, of course, vice versa. At work, I'm still reading David Landis Budhill's Basho's Journey which, after the Reichhold, is the most complete and has notes for every poem. They'll be more details on both of these volumes in future posts.

Come mid-October, I hope to be working on the new issues, #'s 165 & 166, along with a new chapbook in the Modest Proposal series, a second volume of translations from 100 Poems by 100 Poets, by Dennis Maloney and Hide Oshiro. This volume will concentrate on poems of nature following the previous Unending Night, which contained love poems.

Jilly Dybka at Poetry Hut has pointed to a beautiful, pointed September poem by one of my favorite poets, Amy Lowell (particularly her shorter poems). Here it is, September, 1918; I think you'll enjoy it.

A Richard Brautigan poem, Star Holes, seems to be making the blog/live journal rounds. This guy just won't lay down and, of course, that's why we love him. Here it is:

Star Holes
I sit here
on the perfect end
of a star,

watching light
pour itself toward
me.

The light pours
itself through
a small hole
in the sky.

I'm not very happy,
but I can see
how things
are faraway.

Richard Brautigan

Finally, in the news of the truly odd, Michael Jackson has reportedly recorded musical versions of the work of Robert Burns. If I didn't read it in The Guardian, I wouldn't have believed it.

You know what: I still don't believe it.

This week's issue from the Lilliput archive is #78 from March 1996.



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I sought my heart
among the shadows
and found instead
a burnished leaf

Albert Huffstickler

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Drag me in,
you are a night that is just beginning.
You are a room I've seen
but have never slept in.
Your shoulder pushes against
the world's edge, and the sky
scrapes softly on my cheek.

Ali Kress

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



Selfless
-----The pulsing
of the soft brown muslin curtain,
for example

And the quietness of rain,
taking you apart

Mark Jackley

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

Thank You
To the pirate faced biker
streaming slowly down
Marshall Avenue,
colors jazzed in the
night time light,
front wheeled Harley
out to here, black
jacket man with beard
of steel, who saw my
one year old boy craning
in his blue stroller
and waved.

Michael Finley

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



Poem Inspired by Hokusai, #7

Hokusai
in hell
draws perfect
circles
one inside
the other.

Alan Catlin

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

When My Ashes Have Cooled Down

Pitch me to the nearest wind.
I'll find my way home.

Bart Solarczyk

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

best,
Don

Basho's Journey Continues & Dancing with Mr. B.

A couple of quick notes and then it's onto the continuing saga of Basho's journey. I was really happy to find out that the Voices and Visions series is currently available via the Annenberg Media site. The good news is that all 13 programs are streamable on line for free with a free signup. The bad news is the series and individual titles are pricey: $39.95 each, $389 for the series. That being said, however, they are available on DVD for the first time and this series is about as good as it gets in its treatment of classic American poets. I have used excerpts from these programs in a poetry appreciation class (the Robert Frost video is particularly fine) I've conducted in the past and plan to use them in the future. If I can come up with the dough, I'll definitely be investing.

I ran across another posting of a Brautigan poem on a Live Journal site that was too good not to share:

Star Holes

I sit here
on the perfect end
of a star,

watching light
pour itself into
me.

The light pours
itself through
a small hole
in the sky.

I'm not very happy,
but I can see
how things are
faraway.

Richard Brautigan

I may be doing a blog only haiku challenge in the future, with print publication of the winner in a future issue of Lilliput Review and also a neat prize for the winner. More on that in a future post but, for now, I will say that all of this is Basho-related.

Over the past week I've been immersing myself in a variety of Basho translations. At work I'm reading Basho's Haiku: Selected Poems by Matsuo Basho translated by David Landis Barnhill, which I'll be getting to in a future post. At home I've just finished up On Love and Barley translated by Lucien Styrk and have been dipping into a number of volumes by the classic haiku commentator, R. H. Blyth, concerning Basho. Blyth is amazing, his knowledge of haiku all-encompassing, and he always manages to off-handedly put in a word about Wordsworth or Lawrence or Whitman, so much so that I have to admit I actually like a critic. Hmn, I've been a bit faint of late, perhaps I need to take my temperature.

It took me quite sometime to get with the flow of Stryk's Basho but once I did there was much to appreciate there. Of the 250 plus poems here, I marked off 15 as being particularly noteworthy. The virtue of Stryk's translation also exhibits its flaw: brevity. These are stripped down to the barest bones. Most are under 10 words, some less than five. When the translations work, they are like the Eastern style of brushwork art; a stroke here, a bird, a few there, an entire mountain range. The brevity suggests boundless possibility and the reader fills in the details. When they fall flat, there is simply nothing, in a most unzen-like way. The ultimate success of the work, I believe, is that some of those that fall flat for me may work for someone else and vice versa. Ultimately, it is Basho who shines through and I suspect the less-is-more approach might have appealed to his monk-like sensibility. He certainly knew how to pack a rucksack with the minimal amount of things!

Here's a few highlights that grabbed me:


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


If I'd the knack
I'd sing like
cherry flakes falling.

Skylark on moor -
sweet song
of non-attachment.

Cormorant fishing
how stirring
how saddening.

Come see real
flowers
of this painful world.

Morning-glory -
it, too,
turns from me.

Man's end -
a bamboo shoot,
or less.

Year-end sprucing,
carpenter
hanging his own shelf.

Summer grasses,
all that remains
of soldiers' dreams.

June rain,
hollyhocks turning
where sun should be.


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


The "summer grasses" haiku is one that I featured in another translation in a previous post. Stryk does it with more economy and equal effect, I believe. It is all, perhaps, a matter of taste, but the more translations I read, the fuller the picture of the original poet, Basho, I seem to get. The verse about the cormorant fishing perhaps needs a gloss. Fisherman commonly used the cormorant to fish by tying a string around its neck so when the bird snared a fish it couldn't swallow and the "fisherman" would simply remove the fish and put the bird back in the water. Not quite fishing with hand grenades, but certainly in the same mode. What really captures the true Basho spirit here is that he is both stirred and saddened, he still sees the miracle of nature despite the appalling behavior of nature's "highest creation", man.

Cover Art by Guy Beining

This week's featured back issue is #160, from November 2007. Enjoy. Beginning next week, we'll going into the way back machine to sample issues from places long ago and faraway.


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


in
cottonwood
bark's cleft

a lichen
buddha

John Martone

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

#213
Only a wisp
Of cloud above,
But like a
Sacred Song
It pointed the way.

Yosano Akiko
translated by Dennis Maloney

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



Crows sitting on naked trees. Expecting snow.

Alan Catlin

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

No appetite
I have no appetite for verse,
but for the velvet vesture
of lamb's ear savored.
between my lips, tonight,
your lobes and limbs
wooly sward and bole,
succulent mullein, growing
virgate among your leaves.

Jeanne Lesinski

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



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

Shawn Bowman

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

washing
dishes first
then shaving

John Martone

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

Till next time,

Don

Robert Service, Jean Shepherd, & Gary Hotham

Artwork by Guy Beining

As inevitably happens from week to week, I think of something to share and, in the press of getting other things done, forget some detail or other. One thing I really wanted to post last week relates to the recent anniversary of the birth of Robert Service (January 16^th). Though I’m not much for narrative poetry, the uniqueness and power of the work of Service is something it would be foolish to ignore. As with all great poets, Service had an insight and overwhelming empathy with the human condition; yes, empathy, because, I believe he wasn’t particularly happy about it but he knew it to the core, not unlike Bukowski, the subject of last weeks musings.

In any case, what rescues Service from morose oblivion is humor; an overriding, abundant, dark, deep sense of humor. So, for his birthday, here is a real treat: a dramatic reading by another student of the human condition, radio monologist and raconteur of many an obscure topic, Jean Shepherd. Admittedly someone who is little known outside the New York metropolitan area (aside from the adaptation of his work in the holiday perennial A Christmas Story), Shep was something of a rite of passage for the young in the late 50’s and early 60’s, one of the last threads to old school radio. He had a soft spot for poetry in general (he once did a whole show reading haiku translations of the masters, deadpan, with “Oriental” music wafting in the background, to somewhat limited success) and Service in particular and, on odd nights when in a certain mood, he would break out the Service and regale the WOR airwaves with tales of the Yukon. So, in celebration of Service’s birthday and in concert with the recent cold snap that has much of the country longing for a little heat not unlike ol' Sam McGee, here is The Cremation of Sam McGee. For more Shepherd, unexcerpted from his natural environment, see the archive of shows Mass Backwards, by Max Schmidt of WBAI, which has a permanent link at the bottom of the sidebar on this page.

I’ve received news that Gary Hotham’s Missed Appointment has been reviewed in the British magazine Presence. Here is a copy of that review by Matthew Paul:

Missed Appointment, Gary Hotham

22pp, $4 inc. postage ($3 within USA).

Cheques payable to Don Wentworth, from:

Lilliput Review, 282 Main Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15201, USA

Gary Hotham has been writing haiku for four decades and his economical style is one of the most distinctive within the homogeneity that comprises much of the English-language haiku published today.

In a brief introduction, Hotham approvingly quotes the belief of Billy Collins, the American 'mainstream' and haiku poet, that haiku contains "a very deep strain of existential gratitude" and that "[a]lmost every haiku says the same thing: 'It's amazing to be alive here.'" This 'Modest Proposal Chapbook' of just 15 haiku exemplifies Hotham's ability to be absolutely in tune with what it means, at any given time, to exist. Quite simply, and in plain language adorned only by mundane adjectives, Hotham writes about things that most haiku poets would overlook:

no where else

but the next flower---

afternoon butterflies

over the parade---

a window no one

looks out of

Whether other writers would ignore such subject matter deliberately or merely by not paying enough attention to the world around them is open to debate. Hotham certainly attunes himself and his readers to moments which, rather than being vitally significant, could be considered trivial, perhaps to the point of banality; but, for my money, the humble and persistently downbeat nature of these poems is admirable in a small dose such as Missed Appointment provides. In longer collections of Hotham's work, though, I'd need a dollop or two of verbosity to offset and lighten the minimalism.

Whatever the merits of his style, one fact about Hotham surely cannot be disputed: that he writes excellent, poignant senryu, two of which I'll end with:

farewell party---

the sweetness of the cake

hard to swallow

Dad's funeral---

the same knot

in my tie

Review by Matthew Paul

This week, the following poems are from LR #141, from January 2007. If anyone is following along, you might notice I’ve skipped #140. #140 is a broadside by Alan Catlin in honor of Cid Corman, entitled “For Cid.” It is a 7 poem collection of short, delicate work which would not be served well by excerpting, though many of the poems stand well alone.

Roethke wrote:

It will come again.

Be still. Wait

How to embrace the stillness.

How to wait with grace.

Pamela Miller Ness

pollen-heavy

a bee easily clears

the headstone

LeRoy Gorman

What is there

before or after

experience?

Everything waits in the dark

for you to say,

Come in.

David Lindley

My heart is torn

since I’ve seen you.

Like the watermark in Osaka Bay

I measure my life

waiting to meet you again.

Princess Motoyoshi

translated by Dennis Maloney & Hide Oshiro

Finally, let me recommend this morning’s poem on The Writer’s Almanac: “How to Kill” by Keith Douglas, who died in the Normandy invasion. It puts a human face and sensibility on the deaths that continue today as war rages on.

best,

Don