Carl Mayfield's All the Way Up: Modest Proposal Chapbook, #24

 

Carl Mayfield is a small press icon and, as with many an old school icon, you will find very few electronic footprints in his wake. Back in the threadbare 80s, he published a small press poetry magazine called Margarine Maypole Orangutan Express. And by magazine, I mean a single sheet of 8.5 x 11" paper, folded once, and slipped into an envelope, with an average of 10 or so brief, sparkling shards of poetry.

It was one of a handful of publications that were an inspiration for Lilliput Review. 

As happens on occasion, a small press editor doubles as a poet in another, slightly askew, but parallel universe. And so we arrive at chapbook #24 in the Modest Proposal Chapbook series (by the by, all chapbooks in the series are $3 postpaid in the US, $5 everywhere else), entitled All The Way Up by Carl Mayfield.

I've been publishing Carl for many years in Lilliput Review and I knew that one of these days we'd get around to doing a collection. All the Way Up is 20 pages of succinct shards of awareness from one of the finer observers, lyrically speaking, of the human experience. Since this is not a review but a notice of publication, I'll simply slip three of those poems into this post to give you a taste. See what you think.  

If you are taken with these three, there are more where they came from. Do a little slipping of your own - a check (made out to 'Don Wentworth') into an envelope or 3 discreetly secreted dollars - and mail it to Lilliput Review 282 Main Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15201. 

Or, if you are in more of a modern mode (or mood), at the top of the right hand sidebar you will find a Paypal 'Buy Now' button for your relatively instant gratification.

20 poems for 3 bucks and you can say you did your small press duty for the week. Give it a go.

You'll be happy you did.

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Photo by Shaggy 359

stirred by people's voices
the greening
willow

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,

Don   

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Animal in Man: Issa's Sunday Service, #88

This week's selection is one of many songs that make reference to the work of Eric Blair, otherwise known by the pen name George Orwell, this one being possibly the most powerful and most relevant to his original message. "Animal Farm" is every bit as political and vile as "1984," and Dead Prez underscores this loud and clear.

In "Animal in Man," all the characters names remain the same except Mister Jones, the farmer, who is transformed into Sammy, and we all know whose Uncle he is.

The revolution will not be televised.










The British made a fine full-length animated version of "Animal Farm" in which no punches were pulled. If you have one hour and eleven minutes, treat yourself. If you'd just like a taste, here is the first ten minutes:







Hallmark Entertainment did a live action version but we are not going there. The Kinks also have a song called "Animal Farm," a million miles from Orwell, so we won't go there today either; perhaps, later in a different installment, from a different point of view.


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Rita Cummings pointed out this excellent feature on Issa done at Haiku Chronicles.  While listening to the audio, you can follow along the text with this .pdf.  Anita Virgil does not avoid the tough questions about Issa, right from the get-go.  In addition, she admits when she's been wrong; it doesn't get much better than that for me.


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Keep the poems coming for the Wednesday Haiku @ Issa's Untidy Hut feature.   Details may be found here.


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This week's feature poems come from Lilliput Review, #111, July 2000 from two masters of the short poem. Enjoy.



2 Reasons To Get Up

The sun shining through the parched rice grass.
The rice letting it.

Carl Mayfield

too small
to roll off -
the drops of morning mist.

Gary Hotham

in the misty day
not growing older...
grave tablets

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 88 songs

Hear 'em all at once on the the LitRock Jukebox

Subscribe to Lilliput Review

Ramble On: Issa's Sunday Service, #28

This week's LitRock entry on Issa's Sunday Service puts some of the rock back in the lit. Led Zeppelin offered many a gift to the first wave of serious Lord of the Rings maniacs stateside and none is arguably better than "Ramble On." Lyrics and music blend nicely into an infectious little number that bears up under repeated playings.

Here's a bonus video of Plant and Page performing a tasty version from 1995.






This week's Lilliput poem comes from issue #49, which was featured in a post previously this year. #42 was a homage issue, where poets got to have their say about idols, influences, and various imps of an impressionable nature. What follows is a real treat, Lilliput-wise: one of the many "Brobdingnag Feature Poems" that have appeared in the mag over the years. What is a Brobdingnag Feature Poem? Well simply put, it is a poem that goes beyond the normal 10 line limit for Lillie. One of the two forthcoming issues, which should see the light of day in December, will showcase #57 in the Brobdingnag series. So it is rather obvious that, though the mag is all about the size-challenged, sometimes my lack of math skills is readily apparent. This poem by Carl Mayfield is an outstanding little number; though it helps to know the work of Philip Larkin, it isn't totally necessary to appreciate how finely articulated and philosophically grounded my long-time correspondent Carl is.



To Philip Larkin

You spoke across the Atlantic
of high windows, of undiminished
youth living elsewhere--
lines of darkness too true
to be upstaged by any poet--
you, me, the saxophone player.
You were the genius
of what didn't happen,
conversant with the impulse
to notice the color of the sun
but fail to see the radiance.
You avoided being duped
by flesh and blood,
watched the light come up
wherever you were,
and the life go down
in your willingness to breathe.
You said you didn't know more
as you grew older, but who does?
Death takes the lot of us
and lets the wind decide who was tallest.
You exchanged your life
for the truth, only to discover
there is more truth
than there is life.
Ah Philip, so many years
of honesty, so many words
writ on water--is your soul
any lighter because you did it so well?

Carl Mayfield

And one from the master, a tad more succinct:





entrusting the thicket
to the field crow...
the lark sings

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

Lilliput Review Back Issue: Homage

Cover by Guy R. Being

Today's featured back issue of Lilliput Review is #42, from March 1993. It was a rare theme issue: homage was that theme and, interestingly if my memory serves me well (it was 16 years ago), it was not an announced theme. It just came together that way. Enjoy.

Satie Revisited #14

if all goes
well
no one may be well ;
the worse,
the better, and if you see
any moment of light
it's like finding
moonlight
in your midnight sherry

Harland Ristau

Rimbaud

some one legged man
chained against the furnace wall
screaming:

hell has no power over pagans

charlie mehrhoff

Ode to T. S. Eliot

I can see clearly now
the need to be cheerful
anyway

Carl Mayfield

Salvador Dali

I can imagine myself
Slumped over a counter
In a downtown diner,
But not in a Salvador Dali

T. N. Turner

Jesus Christ

w/ a good roof,
everything else
is rain rolling

Eric Williamson

And the quote that started the whole issue off:

"If Al Green had one tit, I'd marry the motherfucker." Miles Davis

Richard Houff's poem above is simultaneously a concrete poem and a found poem; his young son had done the image and he added the title. Without Miles Davis, or Al Green for that matter, there never would have been a world worth living in.

I still miss Harland Ristau, very much. This one's for you, bud.

in honor of the equinox
the hedge
turns green

Issa
translated by David Lanoue

best,
Don

The Basho Haiku Challenge ...

Cover by Wayne Hogan

In a number of recent posts, I've been talking about the various editions of Basho's haiku that I have been reading in preparation for a future Modest Proposal Chapbook project. It is funny how the web works, often in delightful ways. Tomoe Sumi, of Kodansha America Press, has been following the posts and comment threads and noticed I hadn't anything as yet to say about the brand new Basho: The Complete Haiku, translated with an introduction by Jane Reichhold. So, she (I believe) contacted me and offered to send along a review copy for comment on the blog. Turns out that I had already purchased this for myself for my birthday (an annual tradition I highly recommend to everyone, the buying yourself a book part that is, the birthday part you're already hip to) so I wrote back and thanked her for her generosity and told her I already had it (and, in fact, was intending to get to it in a future post). She then, once again generously, proposed that she send the copy anyway and that I give it to someone who reads the blog.

And the 2008 Basho Haiku Challenge was born.

So, here's the deal: for the next four weeks, send along up to 5 haiku to lilliput review at gmail dot com (spelled out to fend off pesky bots) and the best haiku wins the review copy of Basho: The Complete Haiku. Minimally, I will need your name and email to contact you with the results. In the subject line of your email, please put "Basho Haiku Challenge" so I can easily differentiate it from the scads of other things that come my way. The final date for submissions will be October 2nd and the winner will be announced in either the October 9th or October 16th posting. My definition of haiku is about as liberal as you can get: I follow no one particular method, school or theory and there is no seasonal requirement. Your haiku can be 1, 2, or 3 lines (over 5 would be a bit much, folks, but I will keep an open mind for experimenters). The one restriction would be that it be in the spirit of haiku (I've always liked the definition of English haiku as lasting the length of one breath, in and out and pause, but that's just me - and, oh yeah, I'm the judge, but, again, it's the spirit of the thing that counts) and that the haiku be previously unpublished in either paper or electronic form (ok, that's two requirements).

If I get only one haiku, we have a winner, so, what the hell, give it a go. I reserve the right to publish the haiku on the blog (or not), with possible publication in Lilliput Review.

And, oh, yeah, spread the word ...

To entice you a bit further here's a little something about Basho: The Complete Haiku. Like it says in the title, it's complete, which is significant in itself as all previous translations are just selections (according to the press release, this is the first complete Basho translation in English). That's 1012 haiku by the master. There are 164 pages of notes, one for each poem, which variously treat a haiku's origin, allusions, variations, and grammatical anomalies, the later being quite important and virtually untranslatable. Reichhold has provided an introduction and a short biography, with appendices on "Haiku Techniques", "A Selected Chronology", "A Glossary of Literary Terms", and a bibliography. I've just begun it and it is formidable; I'll be looking at it in more depth in a future post, probably sometime after the contest is over.

Why so long, you may ask? Well, a couple of reasons. I have a number of poetry projects coming up in the next four weeks that are going to drain time from both the blog and the magazine (Lilliput Review). In just under four weeks I'm going to be teaching a session on poetry appreciation entitled How to Read Poetry (& Why) for the Osher lifelong learning institute. A week after that session, we'll be starting a poetry discussion group at the library I work at entitled 3 Poems By .... Both of these are currently chewing up huge chunks of my time. Throw on top of that that I've been asked to speak at the local library school the week after the poetry program and I'd say it is a full calendar.

But the old adage when you've got lemons may apply here. I mentioned in a previous post some of these upcoming projects and a number of folks asked me to elaborate a little on them so I'll be using a future post (or two) to do just that. It will help to get my head straight about what I'll be trying to do and, hopefully, will be of interest to folks. Of course, the weekly posting of poems from the Lilliput Archive will go along with any postings and I'll squeeze in any relevant info that comes my way and that fits in(to my schedule, that is).

Briefly, a Basho update. I'm now reading the Reichhold translations at home, along with the Makoto Ueda full length study with translations, and the David Landis Barnhill translations at work. These have and will significantly slow down over the next few weeks because of the reasons stated above.

One news item of note: Nathaniel Otting at the Kenyon Review blog has adjusted his post on 52 German Poets, which originally called Lillie's Near Perfect List of Poetry Books, which inspired the German poet list, "tepid", to read "intrepid", and has posted some further thoughts on his initial reaction to the enterprise and ideas like this in general. My thanks to Nathaniel for his generous reconsideration.

Onto the Lilliput archive, this issue being #79, from June 1996, with another great cover by the also intrepid Wayne Hogan. Enjoy.


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Alone
Alone in the dark,
I find the salmon of my mind
swimming downstream
to die.

Carolyn Long

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

Men's Room Wall
Feeling immense relief,
then these words confront me:
Dead fish follow the stream.

David Denny

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

Departure
The damp petal lingers, adheres
to fingers;

I flick it
away, some of my flesh

clinging to its flight
into rough grass,

and I turn
to embrace the spring

wind in my face,
the long road ahead.

Michael Newell

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Spring Flower
She planted yellow
and the bulb
is its own

hibernation,

the secret
cave of the heart,

or perhaps only

the refreshed wound

that can bloom
again.

Duncan Zenobia Saffir

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Flowers once bled from my hands;
Now even the stems are gone

Jack Greene

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


I've arranged things all day...
- ----now the moonlight--
- ---sshines my shoes.

Carl Mayfield



best,
Don

Cid Corman, Etheridge Knight, Wendell Berry and the Art of Hearing Silence

Artwork by Albert Huffstickler

A couple of items of interest this week. Etheridge Knight has appeared twice in the news in the last little while. His work is featured in issue #7 of Presa, with a remembrance in an article entitled "Lest We Forget" by Ronnie Lane. Indeed. Knight was one of the most straightforward, powerful poets to emerge from the 60's, his first collection being published by Broadside Press while he was still in prison. In addition, Mary Karr has published a remembrance and poem by Knight in her most recent Poet's Choice column in the Washington Post. Here's another poem that gets down to the essence: Feeling Fucked Up.

 
This week is also the birthday of another of our contemporary greats, Wendell Berry. The following is one of his most famous poems and its got it all:

The Peace of Wild Things


When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night to the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives might be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world and am free.

Wendell Berry

Happy birthday, Mr. Berry.

The last item in the news this week is a sad one. Though they fought a valiant battle, Acres of Books in Long Beach, CA, will be closing. Even the mighty Ray Bradbury couldn't stem the continuous tide of failing bookshops. It is, indeed, a very sad day.





Recently, I have been complaining of the dearth of good modern poetry books, at least the ones I've been reading (or, alternately, the fact that I've finally been broken on the poetic wheel). I'm happy to report that I've run into one I can heartily recommend: The Next One Thousand Years: the Selected Poems of Cid Corman. Edited by Ce Rosenow and Bob Arnold and published by Bob and Susan Arnold's Longhouse Publishers, this generous selection of Cid's work was just the thing to get me off the anti-lyrical snide. This particular collection of Cid's work highlights his translations of both classic and modern works, as well as his own work. Over 70 of the 190 plus pages are devoted to translations. If Basho, Issa, Saigyo, Rilke and Rumi are your poets of preference, you will see them through new eyes when you see them through Cid's translations. His own work is, for me, the highlight however. Cid was so prolific that there probably could be a different version of his selected works for each year in the title of this volume. The selection here is spot-on, covering his entire career. I found myself marking for further review the poems of his later years, when his work was honed down to sparse, scintillating points. Here are a couple to whet your taste:

I will tell you the secret.
Listen.


What is it? - you ask?
I keep telling you:


----------------------Listen.

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

Ask me when
I am dead
the meaning


of this. Then
each word will
answer you.

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

Of course,
life matters.
Twitter,


sparrow
and let me
know it.

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

If you are a fan of Cid's, from Lilliput or his Modest Proposal chapbooks or his numerous other works, this is a must-have collection. Hopefully, there is much, much more to come.



This week's featured issue from the Lilliput archive is #106, from September 1999. Enjoy.

Truth Is The Person Who Is There


The sky meets the mountain with no further
obligation.

Geoff Bouvier

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

Soft, sandy fine earth,
I draw her initials in
your impermanence.

Linda Zeiser

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

Love this man
-------and you will attain nothing
Ah! to love the sea!------

Kane Way

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

crossing the verrazano-narrows

eat beef
be well
try sontag
she's old

Laura Joy Lustig

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

her
orgasm
face

McMurtagh

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

Through the silence
--------another silence
gathers around her lips

Carl Mayfield

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

best,
Don

Note: If you would like to receive the two current issues of Lilliput 
Review free (or have your current subscription extended two issues),
just make a suggestion of a title or titles for the Near Perfect Books 
of Poetry page, either in a comment to this post, in email to lilliput
review at gmail dot com, or in snail mail to the address on the
homepage.

Back in the Real World ...

Cover by Harland Ristau

Trying to play catch-up up here after a week plus of illness, to little avail. It is amazing how missing a week's worth of work seems to leave you a month behind.

Speaking of lost time, I spent much of my time in bed with Proust and one could do worse in sickbed companions. When not lulling me gently back to sleep, the last volume of the recent new translation of In Search of Lost Time, Finding Time Again, treated me to airy hallucinations and astonishing feats of remembrance, both fictional (from the previous 2700 pages of In Search of!) and personal. A detailed account of my extended convalescing may be found in a posting I did for the brand new Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh blog, Eleventh Stack. The blog is an interesting experiment; one post a day by one of 11 different librarians on a variety of topics, giving a wide range of both tastes and perspectives, all centered around books, media and programming available through the library.

Lost time not withstanding, I've restarted work on getting the new issues out; currently only contributor copies and a few batches have hit the mails. So, since it's time to put the nose to the grindstone, I'll keep this week's post brief and turn to the latest sampling from a back issue of Lilliput Review.

This week's issue is #149, from February 2006. This selection starts with a poem by John Martone, who has become a regular in the Lillie family of poets; his unique "perspective" here set off a whole round of interesting points of view.


on knees
to enter

other
worlds under

tomato
bushes

John Martone

invisible now
the path I followed . . .
river starlight

Fonda Bell Miller

Moon works as a word
To lift us over ditches –
Taste it first-hand: moon

T. J. Perrin

a short rain on arrival ---
the puddle never goes
over the top

Gary Hotham

And one last parting shot, this time from Carl Mayfield, put it all in the ultimate perspective:




Writing seems
more mysterious to me
now
than when I started
3 thousand years ago.

Carl Mayfield

Hopefully, some of you will begin hearing from me sooner rather than later; in any case, until next week,

best,
Don

Helen Vendler, Peter Pauper, and the Meaning of Everything

Best to get the important stuff out of the way first: the Meaning of Everything. This should clear up everything nicely. If, perchance, there are any further questions, try here. Or here. Not quite: how about here? Surely here (which may be continually refreshed). How about a little old school? Perhaps a tad older? No? Yes?

Let this be the last word on that ... And now for something completely different ...

Every once in awhile, something will just leap up from behind a rock to scare or surprise the bejezus out of us. As I may have mentioned previously, in my paying job I spend a great deal of time reading literature reviews, most of which are functional at best and run of the mill most of the time. Word limitations are the culprit in many cases, so it is sometimes a pleasure to read lengthier work when time allows. This week I stumbled across a Helen Vendler review of a new book by Charles Wright in the New York Review of Books (March 6, 2008). Always insightful, Vendler manages to at once balance particular detail with the larger picture of Wright's career to make for pleasurable reading in and of itself. In the midst of her precise, lyrical explication the following arrested me in mid-work mode:


"Like Yeats, he (Wright) thinks that each of us, poet and non-poet, must invent the unfolding choreography of his own life. The choreography that non-poets trace is a virtual poem---the same, although silent, as the spoken poem of the writer."


And the review continues from there. It felt like one of those emergency early warning system tests one still hears occasionally on the radio (on the what?), only this one came in the middle of a book review. Followed by the new Tommy James and the Shondells song. This has only been a test. Ms. Vendler now returns you to your regular work mode. And somehow that Tommy James song just never sounds the same.

In the midst of a rather busy week and a 12 hour work day Monday, shuffling between two jobs, I managed to pick up a little something to read in the off free moments while grabbing a bite etc. I was looking for something light (weight-wise; I had a two mile walk ahead) yet filling. And I ran across one of the old Hallmark editions of haiku on the library shelf, as pictured above, so gave it a go. It reminded me of how, for so many people, the first introduction to Asian poetry came in the form of these Hallmark/Peter Pauper editions, many of which were charmingly illustrated:




What is most impressive about this particular volume, Silent Flowers: a New Collection of Japanese Haiku Poems, is the fact that the translations are by the master haiku sensei, R. H. Blyth, whose 4 volume magnum opus on the haiku is still the standard that translation should be measured against. Here are a few examples from the patron of this site, Issa:



Just simply alive,
Both of us, I
And the poppy

A world of grief and pain:
Flowers bloom;
Even then ...

"The peony was as big as this"
Says the little girl,
Opening her arms.

Reflected
in the eye of the dragon-fly
The distant hills

Spring begins again;
Upon folly,
Folly returns.

Cover by Cornpuff

This week we arrive at Lilliput #146, from October 2005. Hope something from these samples grabs you. As always, copies of this and any other back issues are available for one buck each, less than a pocketful of change.

the tall trees remind me

how much less I could say

than I do

Constance Campbell

field of sunflowers

far as the eye can see

farther

Anne LB Davidson

Silence spreading
across the ridge
after the hawk

Carl Mayfield

To Rise

Lily buds
curve,
hum
secrets.
Again,
o wet pale loop of swan's logic.

James Owens

Autumn wind -
sidewalk leaves whirling
a perfect enso.

Greg Watson

Finally, a bit of news. The contributor copies of the new issues, #161 and #162, will begin going out in the next two weeks, with the full subscriber run hitting the mails during the month of March. FYI, it takes about a full month to send the entire run out to subscribers, what with notes to be written, apologies to be proffered, and praise to be lavishly distributed.


best till next week,

Don

Brautigan Drives on Deep into Psyche

I was all set to put up a post about Gerald Stern (it would begin “I’m in love with Gerald Stern”) when, thanks to The Writer’s Almanac, I realized yesterday was the anniversary of Richard Brautigan’s birth.

I can’t think of anything more momentous for the small press than Richard Brautigan’s birth. In fact, I can’t think of anything more lyrically momentous than Richard Brautigan’s birth when it comes to the legacy of that flower generation. You know who you are out there: bankers, lawyers, cheats, lovers, cowards, colleagues, lechers, thieves, poets, screamers, corpses, parents, betrayers. There was a moment in your lives, all your lives, when, briefly, in your field of vision, in the middle distance, everything coalesced; it all made perfect sense, there, there it is: and like a wisp of scent, it wafted off.

Gone.

Richard Brautigan, gone. What he left behind has been praised, ridiculed, despised, laughed at, admired, wept over, and, most tragically, forgotten. Among others, he was the reason that an entire generation of men let down their guard. What a thought! How many took up the pen when they realized they could say, with varying degrees of proficiency, what they felt rather than what they knew. Imagine that!

Imagine.

So, I scurried off to my bookshelf to leaf through my collection of Brautigan poesy for something momentous to post and, lo and behold, it’s almost nowhere to be found. Just two copies of Rommel Drives on Deep into Egypt and a copy of Loading Mercury with a Pitchfork. This is what happens when you decide to patch some plaster and the next thing you know, you are painting two rooms and moving everything around, including the floor to ceiling books that were stuffed into said rooms. In a panic, I head off on the net only to discover, at brautigan.net, that his poetry collections, annotated at that, are all up and online. The presentation isn’t very appealing but it is what it is: the work. I highly recommend you knock yourself out. For some it will be nostalgia, for others, truth.

I believe, for me, the word is love.

Well, I can hardly continue without at least one Brautigan gem, to entice you toward the others. From Rommel …

Feasting and Drinking Went on Far into the Night

Feasting and drinking went on far into the night

but in the end we went home alone to console ourselves

which seems to be what so many things are all about

like the branches of a tree just after the wind

stops blowing.

This week’s featured back issue of Lilliput Review is #142, published in January 2005:

Artwork by Wayne Hogan

between

breathing

in

&

breathing

out

everything

else

Ed Baker

Pacifist

Another good day.

No one wanted my life

and I returned the favor.

Carl Mayfield

Pencil Sharpener: Hand-Held

Dunce cap with a razor crease

Thin plastic on the outside,

but the cone recedes

to infinity. Perhaps there is

a tree of knowledge. You

get wood shavings, lead dust.

Mark Cunnigham

fronds, their dog, balm of gilead

stories unfold in the ferns

if you know how to find them

and pick with respect

you can live on what you hear

and never go hungry

and never get full

Patricia Ranzoni

I’d like to think that Richard would have liked these poems. Very much.

Till next week,

Don