Hits of Sunshine (for Allen Ginsberg): Issa's Sunday Service, #174

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Sonic Youth makes a spectacular return to the Sunday Service, with one of my favorite 'tunes' - "Hits of Sunshine (for Allen Ginsberg). There's lots to recommend this tune - it is one long noodle, nicely cradled between opening and closing lyrics. It runs plus 11 minutes in contrast to last week's selection, which barely clocked in at 1 minute.

Is it all noodle for noodling sake, you ask? Well, put on the headphones and you will find a delightful balance of two lead guitars, one per speaker, plus a fat-ish bottom in the middle, to sustain the journey.

Besides the hat tip to Mr. Ginsberg, we've got a painter with a conflicted goddess, all manner of colors, there is blues and haiku (so precipitously spaced as to hint at Sal Paradise), and all those yellow shadow girls.

Yes, lots to keep the wary wondering and the curious curiouser.



Hits of Sunshine (for Allen Ginsberg)

Today I said goodbye to my conflicted goddess
Her lush eyes show surprise
At how we could gather knowledge
The painting has a dream
Where shadow breaks the scene
And the colors run off
Blue is bashful, green is my goal
Yellow girls are running backward
Until the next time, with six hits of sunshine
The lights will blind us with blues in haiku
The shadow has a dream
Where painters look to sea
And colors burn out
Now I know where I once saw you
Stepping into muddy water
John's reflection decried perfection
Now you walk him through the garden
Waiting in the wings
Painters shade their dreams
With falling colors

See me wave goodbye forever
Happiness the goddess lover
Hurry back remember last time
The hits of sunshine, the hits of goldmine
I'll see you back tonight
Where painters love the light
And yellow shadow girls


As long as we are conjuring Allen via extra-psychic means, here is a little something from the recent full-length feature, Howl. 

Here is a delightful little 10 minute interview/reading by Allen, so he may speak for himself:

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Photo (detail) by Vinoth Chandar

in the hell painting
perched on a fence...   
a lark sings

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,

Don

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Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 174 songs

Frank O'Hara Hit: Issa's Sunday Service, #166

   
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One of my favorite bands - strike that, one of the best alternative bands of the last 25 years, Sonic Youth is currently on what may prove to be permanent hiatus. It is often difficult to overcome the tribulations of love within a band, especially when it goes decidedly south. But, you never know.

I've great faith in Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore.

That being said, I discovered last week Moore has a new band - Chelsea Light Moving (tip of the hat to Philip Glass) - and they seriously rock and, in the case above, seriously litrock.  

"Frank O'Hara Hit" has got everything going for it in the art rock sense - already there are complaints that Chelsea sounds just like Sonic Youth. Yeah, well, complain away, great music is great music, so there you go.

And then there is: "Yes no, yes no, yes, yes", which you will hear at the very end of the cut, if you make it all the way through the glorious noodling (yes, I recognize this isn't everybody's cup of meat) . 

And, if not and you are still here (yes, I do love you), you can hear it in it's original context, if you prefer the lyrical to the sonic (pun intended): here is Frank O'Hara, reading his poem "September 14th, 1959 (Moon)."
 



September 14th 1959 (The Moon)

Serenity lopes along like exhaustion
only windier and silver-eyed
where fragments of distress in hunks
lay like the plaster in the bedroom
when the bed fell down, greenly
murmuring a phrase from the Jacksonville
Chamber of Commerce of the Pacific
yes no, yes no, yes, yes, yes

an agate breeze pours through the gate
of reddish hair there is a summer
of silence and inquiry waiting there
it is full of wildness and tension
like a gare, the warmly running trains
of the South escape to sweet brooks
and grassy roadbeds underneath the
thankful and enlightening Russian moon 


There's another song called "Burroughs" on the new album, which I have on order, and which no doubt will be making an appearance here sometime soon.

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Moon Gazing, Hokusai School 19th century

if only she were here
for me to nag...
tonight's moon!

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,

Don   

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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 166 songs

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

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

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

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






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





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

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


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

Riding the Curved Bowl

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

                        Pendarvis

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

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

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

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

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 101 songs

Subscribe to Lilliput Review

Small Flowers Crack Concrete: Issa's Sunday Service, #24

d.a.levy (foreground)

It's hard for me personally to believe that 24 weeks into this little music project and this is the first appearance of the sensational Sonic Youth but there you are. They will be back. What you get with this song, "Small Flowers Crack Concrete," is a true blend of poetry and rock, recitation and cosmic noodling, that fans of this band frankly can't get enough of.

I'm not sure how anyone who has a problem with strong language could have found their way here but, if that is the case, you are duly notified that "Small Flowers Crack Concrete" has some outstanding examples.

At the center of this song is Cleveland poet, d.a.levy, mystic, prophet, and cosmic cowboy with Beat sensibilities, an idealist who burnt as fast, hard, and, relatively, as brilliantly as Morrison, Hendrix, James Dean and many another counterculture figures of the Era of Change. I've written about levy before, back at the old Beneath Cherry Blossoms blog (beware of pop-ups). A piece on a book plus dvd on levy, d.a.levy & the mimeograph revolution, which I wrote for The Small Press Review and was reprinted by the outlaw poetry and free jazz network, may be read here (the review follows a brief intro by Ken Petrochuk).

Hope you enjoy this week's Litrock selection at Issa's Sunday Service.



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This week's feature poem comes from Lilliput Review #35, which was an "All Women Issue." This poem by, the fine poet Belinda Subraman (who runs a great series of interview/podcasts with poets), snuck in even though it broke the ten line limit rule.

Eve La Nuit

she was a sculptress
who felt eaten by men
gobbled up in their world
beaten
licked
her most famous piece
was an abstract view
some think of a bird
hungry
with a gaping mouth
or else a cock split open
or perhaps a serpent
who could tell an apple
from a woman

Belinda Subraman

dewdrops scatter--
done with this crappy
world

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

C. P. Cavafy: State of the Art Website

Tomorrow is the anniversary of the birth of the great Greek poet, C. P. Cavafy. Two new volumes of his work have just been published: a new Collected Poems and a volume entitled The Unfinished Poems. Online the official Cavafy website is a state of the art wonder, collecting a variety of translations (sometimes up to 4 for an individual poem) into 5 distinct categories: "The Canon," "Repudiated," "Hidden," "Unfinished (titles only)," and "Prose Poems." There are also sections of his prose, as well as biographical, critical material, and a bibliography of his work. In addition there is an archival section that has notes, images, manuscripts, and more.

The respect accorded to the poet here should be a model for website development of all major poets, it is that good. All the major works, as translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard are available to read, with many alternate translations as alluded to above. As an example, here are two translations of a short poem of interest:

Long Ago

I’d like to speak of this memory...
but it’s so faded now... as though nothing is left—
because it was so long ago, in my early adolescent years.

A skin as though of jasmine...
that August evening—was it August?—
I can still just recall the eyes: blue, I think they were...
Ah yes, blue: a sapphire blue.

C. P. Cavafy
translated by Edmund Keeley/Philip Sherrard

Far Back

I should like to tell you of this reminiscence....
But it has faded so.... it is as though nothing now remained —
because far back, in my first adolescent years it lies.

A skin that was suggestive of the jasmine....
That August evening — Was it the month of August?....
Hardly do I remember now the eyes; they were blue, I think....
Ah, yes! I can recall their blue — a sapphire blue.

C. P. Cavafy
translated by John Cavafy

Placing a variety of translations of individual poems side by side like this helps greatly in attempting to evoke the poet's original execution and intent. Even the lesser translations provide a wealth of suggestion for healthy speculation. Another poem I was taken with, "Candles," has three variations as well as the original Greek. It just doesn't get much better than this. It's well worth checking out while Cavafy is in mind.

Tomorrow is also the birthday of Yusef Komunyakaa: here is nice selection of his work at the Internet Poetry Archive.

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Cover by Bobo

This visit to the Lilliput Review archive takes a look at issue #37 from October 1992. Issues #1 through the 30's were in the original Lillie format, approx. 3.6 x 4.25", as opposed to the layout it eventually morphed into, 4.25 x 3.5." Whats the diff, you might ask. Well, the current format has 16 pages, as opposed to 12 pages, and is taller than it is wide, the reverse of the original. Thus more pages and more poems per page. The old format averaged between 10 to 15 poems, the new 20 to 26 or so.

Just in case you were wondering.

As a result, from here out through issue #1, there are less poems to choose from so, as a result, there will probably be a few less sample poems per issue. Here are 3 from October 1992:

blackness
like a smile
engulfing a white bird
a single motion
gaining the swooping speeed
of a voice
stretching across the land,
a sheet of sound
that might blanket
the living birth
within your throat

Ben Tremillo

Second Chance

In your dream you return
to the place where you went
wrong, and given this chance
to change things you go on
the way you went before.
Even in sleep you know
there is only one go --
and it went well the first time.
Where it didn't -- well, it will
be good to see you again.

Louis McKee

Gone Forever

the sky, flat and infinite blue
with coos of a mourning dove
bouncing off its page

who would call you back
when even the smallest cries
are erased

Vogn

Finally, happy birthday to Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth:

the distant mountain
reflected in his eyes...
dragonfly

Issa
translated by David Lanoue

best,
Don