William Wharton: an Appreciation (Redux)

Jacket illustration and design by Fred Marcellino

In a previous post, I mentioned the death of William Wharton and how important his book Dad had been to me during my father's long illness. I also mentioned that I was working up an extended post on the subject for Eleventh Stack, the blog at my place of work.

Well, it is done; it is very personal and, I hope, worth sharing. Ron Silliman picked it up for a recent listing of posts on his blog.

Here it is. Hope you like it.


best,
Don

Mingus ...

Just a quick note until Thursday's posting: today is the birthday of one of the single most innovative composers of jazz music (and my personal favorite), Charles Mingus.

In celebration, I've posted an entry to the Eleventh Stack blog at my day job. So here's a cross-posting of sorts, for those who enjoy music with (and in) their poetry.

Till Thursday,
Don

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