Garden of Love: Issa's Sunday Service #159

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There is a brand new album by Martha Redbone Roots Project - the Garden of Love: the Songs of William Blake (the entire album is available directly from the artist here). Above is the title selection and, below, Blake's original: 


Garden of Love - William Blake

I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen:
A Chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this Chapel were shut,
And Thou shalt not writ over the door;
So I turn'd to the Garden of Love,
That so many sweet flowers bore.

And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tomb-stones where flowers should be:
And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars, my joys & desires. 


A tip of the hat to Mark Forrester for recommending the Martha Redbone Project be featured on the Sunday Service. As he remarked to me in email, the blending of Blake's composition "with musical influences that lean heavily on Appalachian folk and gospel" works well. This is an album to own for fans of literary sources in unique settings. 

Here's a live version of Garden of Love with lots of great energy. Enjoy.





For those with sharp memories, this is the second time this Blake 'lyric' has been featured (though with a different title) on the Sunday Service: here is the first.


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7 Birds on Quince Tree and Sparrow on Peony by Hiroshige

in the pitiful garden
no pitiful
peonies!

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,

Don   

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Johnny Baranski & Margaret Beverland: Wednesday Haiku, #100

Art and Words by William Blake

epiphany
all that I long for
in one star

Johnny Baranski

 

Photograph by Jose Rocha

unlocking
the gun cupboard
the wild in the dog's eyes

Margaret Beverland

Image by Coulter Mitchell

in cold water
sipping the stars...
Milky Way

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

  

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Roll on John: Issa's Sunday Service, #138

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It seems somehow at once extremely odd and just right that Bob Dylan should pen a eulogy for John Lennon some thirty plus years after Lennon's death. One is, of course, tempted to see in this a bit of self-eulogizing but, if that's a case, it is not simply a eulogy for a poet/songwriter but for an entire generation who venerated him, or more precisely stated, them.

Listen to this song and, like the title song Tempest, about the Titanic, you'll be tempted to never listen to it again. And that would be a mistake. Because when you listen to it again and then again, it will grab you hard and grab you deep. It's really a lesson in songwriting - it is hardly at all like what we might have expected if someone had said, say  6 months ago, what do you think a song by Bob Dylan about John Lennon would be like. 

This is Bob Dylan's John Lennon and it is, indeed, a privilege to get a glimpse into his thoughts, as it always is.

Tyger, tyger, burning bright.

I heard the news today, oh boy.

Roll On John

Doctor, doctor, tell me the time of day
Another bottle's empty
Another penny spent
He turned around and he slowly walked away
They shot him in the back and down he went

Shine your light, move it on, you burn so bright, roll on John
From the Liverpool docks to the red light Hamburg streets
Down in the quarry with the Quarrymen.
Playing to the big crowds Playing to the cheap seats
Another day in your life until your journey’s end
Shine your light, move it on, you burn so bright, roll on John

Sailing through the tradewinds
Bound for the sun
Rags on your back just like any other slave
They tied your hands and they clamped your mouth
Wasn’t no way out of that deep dark cave

Shine your light, move it on, you burn so bright, roll on John
I heard the news today, oh boy
They hauled your ship up on the shore
Now the city’s gone dark
There is no more joy
They tore the heart right out and cut it to the core

Shine your light, move it on, you burn so bright, roll on John
Put on your bags and get ‘em packed.
Leave right now you won’t be far from wrong 

The sooner you go, the quicker you’ll be back
You’ve been cooped up on an island far too long

Shine your light, move it on, you burn so bright, roll on John
Slow down you’re moving too fast
Come together right now over me
Your bones are weary
You’re about to breathe your last
Lord, you know how hard that it can be

Shine your light, move it on, you burn so bright, roll on John
Roll on John, roll through the rain and snow
Take the righthand road and go where the buffalo roam
They’ll trap you in an ambush before you know
Too late now to sail back home

Shine your light, move it on, you burn so bright, roll on John
Tyger, Tyger burning bright
I pray the lord my soul to keep In the forest of the night
Cover him over and let him sleep
Shine your light, move it on, you burn so bright, roll on John.


At any given moment in time, you will get a different Bob Dylan (as you will, in fact, get a different you). Here's an interview by Ed Bradley when Dylan published the autobiographical Chonicles, One. His latest interview, with Rolling Stone magazine, in which he declares he has been transfigured and asserts some very strange notions about a Sonny Barger biography published quite a ways back, is still another moment in time. When all these moments in time are strung together, is there contradicition? Why, yes. Is there transfiguration? Eh, maybe so. Is there revelation, in the artistic sense of the word?

Most definitely.

   

And, for all you rock singers out there, your definitive lesson on how to sing lead and chew gum at the same time (while touching the soul of the world) follows:

       

on the high priest's
head...
flies making love

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,

Don 

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Dance of the Hopping Mad: Issa's Sunday Service, #117

This week's selection on the Sunday Service comes from a recent email by a reader (who received two free copies of Lilliput Review for the suggestion - so can you!) who pointed me to the song "Dance of the Hopping Mad" by The Raincoats and what a delight it is. The song incorporates lyrics from William Blake's poem "The Garden of Love, which follows:



The Garden of Love
  I laid me down upon a banks
  Where Love lay sleeping;
  I heard among the rushes dank
  Weeping, weeping.
  Then I went to the heath and the wild,
  To the thistles and thorns of the waste;
  And they told me how they were beguiled,
  Driven out, and compelled to the chaste.
  I went to the Garden of Love,
  And saw what I never had seen;
  A Chapel was built in the midst,
  Where I used to play on the green.
  And the gates of this Chapel were shut,
  And 'Thou shalt not' writ over the door;
  So I turned to the Garden of Love
  That so many sweet flowers bore.
  And I saw it was filled with graves,
  And tombstones where flowers should be;
  And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,
  And binding with briars my joys and desires.


(NOTE: the first 8 lines transcribed here are actually a separate Blake poem entitled "I laid me down upon the banks.  Thanks to Mark for pointing that out - see COMMENTS, below.)


And here's a musical rendition of the original Blake:

The Garden of Love by William Blake Music by Rodney Money



Let's finish up where we began, with the Raincoats, performing "Don't Be Mean," a little song describing something we've all experienced and hardly ever talk about:




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This week's feature comes from Lilliput Review #72, in August 1995, and is a little duet, a pas de deux, a neat little dovetailing, a fancy twin step ... call it what you well, Beaird Glover and Daniel DiGriz do it and they do it well. Their selection is serendipitous, to say the least, and in that they go out to Tom Clark, who will understand I didn't go looking for these; they found me, 16 years later, almost to the day of our discussion.

Enjoy.

Faces
  in the ancient early beginning
  of humankind
  all people had only 1 face.
  then, thousands of years later,
  there were 2 faces.
  the idea that everyone looks
  differently
  is a fairly new one

        Beaird Glover

mocking myself
i see
both faces

Daniel DiGriz

in lightning's flash
faces in a row...
old men

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,

Don

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Ah Sunflower, Weary of Time: Issa's Sunday Service, #92

Where does one begin when beginning with The Fugs?  A band of poets masquerading as rock/folk stars or rock/folk stars masquerading as poets?

One of best places to begin is with William Blake, whose song, "Ah Sunflower," is this week's Sunday Service selection.   It wasn't number one with a bullet, to be sure, in fact the purveyors of songs like "Kill for Peace" probably wouldn't have been too happy if it was.  Still, there is something about this little number that reminds we of many a poem of death, but in this particular case, specifically one of Basho's most famous ku

The summer's grass!
all that's left
of ancient warriors' dreams.

Bashō

It was "Arise from their graves" that got my attention in the Blake; to we the dead pining youth and pale virgin aspiring to go where the sunflower has been reminds me of how warriors' dreams become summer grasses.

Literally and figurately, at least that's how I read it.  Here's the Blake / Fugs lyric:

Ah Sunflower, weary of time,
Who countest the steps of the sun;
Seeking after that sweet golden clime
Where the traveller's journey is done;

Where the Youth pined away with desire,
And the pale virgin shrouded in snow,
Arise from their graves, and aspire
Where my Sunflower wishes to go!

William Blake

The Fugs were made up primarily of Tuli Kupferberg and Ed Sanders, with other various members going and coming through the years.   For those who wish to refresh their minds or familiarize themselves with the Triassic period, here's Ed Sanders's own unique take on the history of the band 

The Fugs were always about The Fun as well as The Anarchy (the Marx Brothers and the Three Stooges come to mind - their participation in attempting to levitate the Pentagon set the standard for a new type of protest); in this video, you can hear how they adapted Howl to the world of music, delightfully:






While we're on a roll, here is Tuli Kupferberg's beautiful "Morning, Morning" from the Fugs second album:







Richie Havens cover of it on his seminal album, "Mixed Bag," is very soulful (& slicker) and the one many will remember before the original.






The Fugs also performed Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach," some other versions of which was covered here not long ago.  Tuli Kupferberg did an arrangement of it that the Fugs performed on an early album.  Here is a video of Ed Sanders and the Fugs performing it at Tuli's funeral. It is not optimally recorded but beautiful for all that. 

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This week's feature poem comes from Lilliput Review, #107, January 2000.  Enjoy.

The Poem

He spoke of the word,
a fox, full of wild odors,
surprising as a startled skunk
underfoot.  And how
this other world strikes,
a bit of venom for the proffered wrist.
A love cry hangs
in this eternal after-instant.

Carol Hamilton

words
are a waste of time...
poppies

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

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Hear 'em all at once on the the LitRock Jukebox

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End of the Night: Issa's Sunday Service, #61

The French writer Louis-Ferdinand Céline is a figure of great influence and great controversy. Widely recognized as the author of one of the great novels of the 20th century, Journey to the End of the Night, he is also almost universally denounced for his anti-Semitic diatribes and opinions. The following is an assessment of his legacy from an authoritative Wikipedia article. In my mind, however, his anti-Semitic views are so appalling as to raise the question of what a "great author" really is.

Journey to the End of the Night is among the most acclaimed novels of the 20th century. Céline's legacy survives in the writings of Samuel Beckett, Jean-Paul Sartre, Queneau and Jean Genet among others, and in the admiration expressed for him by people like Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, Robbe-Grillet, and Barthes. In the United States, writers like Charles Bukowski, Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac, Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., William S. Burroughs, and Ken Kesey owe an obvious debt to the author of Voyage au bout de la nuit, though the relatively late date of the first English language translation means that any direct influence can be difficult to demonstrate, except in Henry Miller's case, who read the book in French shortly after it was published while he was living in Paris. Few first novels have had the impact of Journey to the End of the Night. Written in an explosive and highly colloquial style, the book shocked most critics but found immediate success with the French reading public, which responded enthusiastically to the violent misadventures of its petit-bourgeois antihero, Bardamu, and his characteristic nihilism. The author's military experiences in WWI, his travels to colonial French West Africa, New York, and his return to postwar France all provide episodes within the sprawling narrative.

Pessimism pervades Céline's fiction as his characters sense failure, anxiety, nihilism, and inertia. Will Self has described Celine's work as an "invective, which — despite the reputation he would later earn as a rabid anti-Semite — is aimed against all classes and races of people with indiscriminate abandon". The narrative of betrayal and exploitation, both real and imagined, corresponds with his personal life. His two true loves, his wife, Lucette Almanzor, and his cat, Bébert, are mentioned with nothing other than kindness and warmth. A progressive disintegration of personality appears in the stylistic incoherence of his books based on his life during the war: Guignol's Band, D'un château l'autre and Nord. However, some critics claim that the books are less incoherent than intentionally fragmented, and that they represent the final development of the style introduced with Journey to the End of the Night, suggesting that Céline maintained his faculties in clear working order to the end of his days. Guignol's Band and its companion novel London Bridge center on the London underworld during WWI. (In London Bridge a sailboat appears, bearing the name King Hamsun, obviously a tribute to another collaborationist writer.) Celine's autobiographical narrator recounts his disastrous partnership with a mystical Frenchman (intent on financing a trip to Tibet by winning a gas-mask competition); his uneasy relationship with London's pimps and prostitutes and their common nemesis, Inspector Matthew of Scotland Yard. These novels are classic examples of his black comedy which few writers have equaled. He continued writing right up to his death in 1961, finishing his last novel, Rigodon, in fact on the day before he died. In Conversations with Professor Y (1955) Céline defends his style, indicating that his heavy use of the ellipsis and his disjointed sentences are an attempt to embody human emotion in written language.

His writings are examples of black comedy, where unfortunate and often terrible things are described humorously. Céline's writing is often hyper-real and its polemic qualities can often be startling; however, his main strength lies in his ability to discredit almost everything and yet not lose a sense of enraged humanity. Céline was also an influence on Irvine Welsh, Günter Grass and Charles Bukowski. Bukowski wrote "'first of all read Céline. the greatest writer of 2,000 years"

Aside from the authors cited above, Jim Morrison of The Doors acknowledges Celine's influence in today's Issa's Sunday Service selection, "End of the Night." Not as often noted about this song, however, is that there is a direct quote from William Blake's "Auguries of Innocence": "

Auguries of Innocence

To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.
A robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all heaven in a rage.
A dove-house filled with doves and pigeons
Shudders hell through all its regions.
A dog starved at his master's gate
Predicts the ruin of the state.
A horse misused upon the road
Calls to heaven for human blood.
Each outcry of the hunted hare
A fibre from the brain does tear.
A skylark wounded in the wing,
A cherubim does cease to sing.
The game-cock clipped and armed for fight
Does the rising sun affright.
Every wolf's and lion's howl
Raises from hell a human soul.
The wild deer wandering here and there
Keeps the human soul from care.
The lamb misused breeds public strife,
And yet forgives the butcher's knife.
The bat that flits at close of eve
Has left the brain that won't believe.
The owl that calls upon the night
Speaks the unbeliever's fright.
He who shall hurt the little wren
Shall never be beloved by men.
He who the ox to wrath has moved
Shall never be by woman loved.
The wanton boy that kills the fly
Shall feel the spider's enmity.
He who torments the chafer's sprite
Weaves a bower in endless night.
The caterpillar on the leaf
Repeats to thee thy mother's grief.
Kill not the moth nor butterfly,
For the Last Judgment draweth nigh.
He who shall train the horse to war
Shall never pass the polar bar.
The beggar's dog and widow's cat,
Feed them, and thou wilt grow fat.
The gnat that sings his summer's song
Poison gets from Slander's tongue.
The poison of the snake and newt
Is the sweat of Envy's foot.
The poison of the honey-bee
Is the artist's jealousy.
The prince's robes and beggar's rags
Are toadstools on the miser's bags.
A truth that's told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent.
It is right it should be so:
Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know
Through the world we safely go.
Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine.
Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine.
The babe is more than swaddling bands,
Throughout all these human lands;
Tools were made and born were hands,
Every farmer understands.
Every tear from every eye
Becomes a babe in eternity;
This is caught by females bright
And returned to its own delight.
The bleat, the bark, bellow, and roar
Are waves that beat on heaven's shore.
The babe that weeps the rod beneath
Writes Revenge! in realms of death.
The beggar's rags fluttering in air
Does to rags the heavens tear.
The soldier armed with sword and gun
Palsied strikes the summer's sun.
The poor man's farthing is worth more
Than all the gold on Afric's shore.
One mite wrung from the labourer's hands
Shall buy and sell the miser's lands,
Or if protected from on high
Does that whole nation sell and buy.
He who mocks the infant's faith
Shall be mocked in age and death.
He who shall teach the child to doubt
The rotting grave shall ne'er get out.
He who respects the infant's faith
Triumphs over hell and death.
The child's toys and the old man's reasons
Are the fruits of the two seasons.
The questioner who sits so sly
Shall never know how to reply.
He who replies to words of doubt
Doth put the light of knowledge out.
The strongest poison ever known
Came from Caesar's laurel crown.
Nought can deform the human race
Like to the armour's iron brace.
When gold and gems adorn the plough
To peaceful arts shall Envy bow.
A riddle or the cricket's cry
Is to doubt a fit reply.
The emmet's inch and eagle's mile
Make lame philosophy to smile.
He who doubts from what he sees
Will ne'er believe, do what you please.
If the sun and moon should doubt,
They'd immediately go out.
To be in a passion you good may do,
But no good if a passion is in you.
The whore and gambler, by the state
Licensed, build that nation's fate.
The harlot's cry from street to street
Shall weave old England's winding sheet.
The winner's shout, the loser's curse,
Dance before dead England's hearse.
Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born.
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight.
Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.
We are led to believe a lie
When we see not through the eye
Which was born in a night to perish in a night,
When the soul slept in beams of light.
God appears, and God is light
To those poor souls who dwell in night,
But does a human form display
To those who dwell in realms of day.

William Blake

I can't speak to the Céline, but the Blake is brilliant. There is the well-known opening 2 couplets:

To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.

And the 8 lines towards the middle:

It is right it should be so:
Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know
Through the world we safely go.
Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine.
Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine.

And near the close, the lines from which Morrison quotes, the only lines in the poem were the rhyme is, songlike, repeated consecutively:

Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born.
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight.
Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.

All three sections, plus the final lines, are strung together by a long catalog of examples, bolstering the poet's argument and assuring his immortality, and ours.



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The featured poem from the Lilliput archive comes from issue #91, September 1997 and is by Cathy Drinkwater Better. Enjoy.

crows gather
row of hunched forms
immersed in no-mind

Cathy Drinkwater Better

paying no attention
to the departing spring...
crows

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

Patti Smith: An Interview, A Reading, and Some Heroine

Patti Smith Reading Virginia Woolf


Here's is a long interview with Patti Smith on one of her recent poetry books, Auguries of Innocence. She covers a wide range of topics, discussing the inspiration for many of the poems and her influences, interspersed with writings and her remembrances over the years. Along the way she touches on Diane Arbus, Virginia Woolf, Nat King Cole, Modigliani, Jim Morrison, William Blake, Janis Joplin, H. P. Lovecraft, R. L. Stevenson, Jimi Hendrix and many more.

For an objective look, here's Slate's take on Auguries, in which Patti name checks, among others, James Wright, a little more surprising then Blake, Rimbaud, Ginsberg and Whitman, whom she regularly invokes.

And here is exactly where the thin line between poetry and music meet ...





Dancing Barefoot - Patti Smith



best,
Don