Books: Bruce Mills, Harvey Hix, Nicole Santalucia, Robert Lee Brewer

I have recently had the good fortune of receiving books as gifts.  Here are a few:

In this beautifully written memoir, Bruce Mills tells his story of raising an autistic son.
A quote from the book:
"Living with Jacob is about more than allowing the language of his mind to erase the chalk lines of my own patterns.  It is about unexpected intersections, the willingness to walk blind, to discern shadows in the lay of the land.  It is about the painful unburdening the comes when the mind expands to see anew."

My partner in crime and fellow BAP blogger has a beautiful and brave new chapbook out, Driving Yourself to Jail in July.   

The Cannoli Machine at the Brooklyn Detention Center

The cannoli machine in the Brooklyn Detention Center is for the visitors;
my dad waited in line when he went to visit my bother.
He didn't know he'd have to empty his pockets,
take off his pinky ring and untie his shoes.
This is the first time I saw my dad afraid,
but he wasn't too afraid to stand in line
with all the other fathers
in front of the cannoli machine.
He ate two or three and noticed a little white cream filling on his cheek
when he saw himself in the surveillance camera;
he noticed that his white t-shirt was washed too many times
and was starting to turn grey,
that his socks didn't match.
I didn't know this is how fathers were made.

This is Brewer's first collection of poems, and it has some real gems, like this one:

like apple cider spiked with spirits

i'm through with being mr nice guy
the time for mud slinging
                  is upon us

there are libraries full of children
exploring new worlds
               new ways of looking

at the world
            father led us to this
path and disappeared into the thicket

of things
          it was up to us to press onward
even as the evidence was gathered

the pricked make the world go round
and all the money is the world is not
worth this moment of autumn

                                the bonfire
crackling and burning up your silhouette
no one uses card catalogues anymore

Always brilliant and prolific, Harvey Hix has done it again.   I will copy an opening stanza or two from a poem, but Harvey's books work as a whole.


Stay Secret, Stay Lost

My understanding that what had to happen had to
did not prepare me to imagine how it would.
What must be is what is not, not what is.
How else contest the paradox than with a liberty--
a libertinism, a spilling--of imagination?
How else prevent the mind's turning territorial
than through such prodigal, even flippant, errancy?
It followed her to school one day, school one day, school one day.
So, against the mind's urge to be imperial,
I am working with random materials:

cherries fallen from the neighbor's apple tree
into my yard, seventy-two sheets from my collection
of page 73s, my grade-school teacher's names, spelled backward,
a vintage plastic model of a vintage 'Vette.
Against the forces out to heredity us,
to standardize our choices by orchestrating
what is offered us to choose from, and thus what anyhow,
and whether, we think, it serves self-definition,
self-defense, to find the unimportant fascinating.
This uncertainty is liberating,  . . .

Translations

Reading Tom Clark’s translation of Wang Wei http://tomclarkblog.blogspot.com/2014/02/down-by-river.html reminded me of how much I love translations.  I love reading two or more and then lining them up and comparing them.   I feel as if I am looking through a window with many compartments, and each one shows a slightly different picture.   "Black Stone over a White Stone" or should I say, "Black Stone Lying on a White Stone" is one of the poems I've seen translated the most, maybe because so many of us know Spanish or think we know Spanish.  I read once that Robert Bly did not know many of the languages he translated.

BLACK STONE OVER A WHITE STONE

(Translation by Andres Rojas)

I will die in Paris in a rainstorm,
on a day I remember already.
I will die in Paris – and by this I stand –
perhaps on a Thursday, like today, in autumn.

A Thursday it will be, because today, a Thursday
spent belaboring these verses, I’ve worn my arm bones
with ill humor, and never as today have I,
in all my journeys, found myself alone once more.

César Vallejo is dead. Everyone beat him
without him doing anything to them;
they struck him hard with a club, and hard too

with a rope; these bear witness:
all Thursdays and arm bones,
loneliness, rain, journeys…

Black Stone Lying On A White Stone

  by César Vallejo
translated by Robert Bly 

   I will die in Paris, on a rainy day,
on some day I can already remember.
I will die in Paris--and I don't step aside--
perhaps on a Thursday, as today is Thursday, in autumn.

   It will be a Thursday, because today, Thursday, setting down
these lines, I have put my upper arm bones on 
wrong, and never so much as today have I found myself
with all the road ahead of me, alone.

   César Vallejo is dead.  Everyone beat him
although he never does anything to them;
they beat him hard with a stick and hard also

   with a rope.  These are the witnesses:
the Thursdays, and the bones of my arms,
the solitude, and the rain, and the roads. . .

THE NEW ISSUE OF POETS/ARTISTS

http://www.poetsandartists.com

I have some work in here.  But the real treat is the artists!

Dickinson comic, after The Heart Asks Pleasure--first (536)

The Heart asks Pleasure--- first

And then--- Excuse from Pain---
And then--- those little Anodynes
That deaden suffering;

And then--- to go to sleep;

And then--- if it should be
The will of its Inquisitor,
The privilege to die---

Pie Beauty after Hopkins

                                                                 

Pied Beauty

BY GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS

Glory be to God for dappled things –

   For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

      For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;

   Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;

      And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

   Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

      With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

                                Praise him.

I'm working on this one.  Hmm.  Which is better?                            

Arson

The house down the street was set on fire a few days ago.



The next door neighbor said
that house has bad karma.
A man died in it,
Then a couple bought it and moved in with 3 kids,
all under 5, one with ALS.
The man got cancer.
He started abusing his wife.
She left without notice last summer.
One morning neighbors watched her
pack everything she could into a van.
By noon she was gone.
The husband, I was told,  followed the postman
around for weeks, asking for her forwarding address.
Then he, too, left.  The grass grew tall around the house,
and the leaves fell, blowing up on the porch.
Then the snow covered it all up
so it looked just like every other house
except for the notices, posted on the door.
Then, one day last week, it was set on fire.
Every fire truck and police officer in Poland
came to put out the flames on a morning of deep snow.
How do you know it was arson? I asked one of the cops.
There were footsteps leading up to the back door, he said.

Reading at Mac Backs Books on Coventry Tonight

at 7:00
with Dawn Shimp and Sammy Greenspan

1820 Coventry Road

Cleveland Heights, Ohio 

Dear Diary

I used to fall asleep at school in the spring during the foaling time.  I would hear my dad get up in the middle of the night, sometimes several times, to check on a mare, and I would wait up to ask him if the foal had come.  Sometimes the vet had to be called.   Sometimes my dad gave me Sominex, which seemed to work better in school than on an eventful night.

At the Y

a woman tells me she was visiting
West Virginia where those toxic chemicals
were spilled into the river.
She said that authorities told her
the water is just fine now.
You can drink it, you can bathe in it,
you can do anything you want in it.

I will if you will, she said she said.


Another woman said they were only now
trying that gas-man
who dumped fracking-fluid
into the Mahoning River last year.
I thought he was already in jail,
she said, but then I found out
they were trying the guy
who told on him.
They always take out the tattlers first. 

Dickinson Comic

Another Winter Walk

Dear Diary

Dab Blasted

How are you today? a woman asks me
at the Y.
I don't know, I say.  How are you?
Blessed, she says.  I am just so blessed
except for this dab blasted weather.
Dab blasted?
Dab blasted.
Oh, I think that's how I am.  Dab-blasted.

Interview with Ravi Shankar and Lisa Russ Spaar

http://blog.bestamericanpoetry.com/the_best_american_poetry/meet-the-press/

Dear Diary

How Earthquakes Work

A woman at the Y asked me
if I read the Vindicator
because there's an article on fracking,
or rather on injection wells.
Evidently, the ODNR has been testing
for seismic activity, she said.
There hasn't been an earthquake since last year
so they think it's safe to start injecting again--
They think the earthquake risk has passed.
Is that how earthquakes work? she asked.

Every now and then the sun shines, and it's just so bright . . .  I have to take a photo, just to remind myself: yep, there are days like this, even if it is supposed to snow again tomorrow.

Dickinson Comic

The Soul selects her own Society --
Then -- shuts the Door --
To her divine Majority --
Present no more --

Unmoved -- she notes the Chariots -- pausing --
At her low Gate --
Unmoved -- an Emperor be kneeling
Upon her Mat --

I've known her -- from an ample nation --
Choose One --
Then -- close the Valves of her attention --
Like Stone -- 

Snow Walk

I'm planning my walk for 3:00 when it's supposed to get up to 5 degrees.  I can't wait!  I've got my face new mask ready --well, it's basically a knit bag that goes over the head.

Comic

My friend, Karen, taught a community class a few years ago, and I sat in on it a few times. This is a quote from a middle school kid in the class.

Comic

Napping in the Snow

It's so cold the deer don't even bother to budge.  If you look closely, you can see there are five or so in the top photo, and there were many more.  They look like brown lumps with ears.

Dressed to Walk!

Really?  Are you sure we have to go out today?  Do you KNOW how cold it is?

The Circus of Lost Dreams

https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-circus-of-lost-dreams/id623295035?mt=11&uo=4

Bluer Sky!

BLUE SKY!

Even if it is freezing!

Dickinson Love Comic

I dwell in Possibility – (466)

BY EMILY DICKINSON

I dwell in Possibility –

A fairer House than Prose –

More numerous of Windows –

Superior – for Doors –

Of Chambers as the Cedars –

Impregnable of eye –

And for an everlasting Roof

The Gambrels of the Sky –

Of Visitors – the fairest –

For Occupation – This –

The spreading wide my narrow Hands

To gather Paradise –

After Emily Dickinson

This drawing model keeps staring down at me as if to ask, Really?  Are you really going to write today?  And I keep thinking, It's possible.  And I keep staring out the window . . .

Prototype for Dickinson comic below

I love my little wooden models!

Dickinson comic

Am I a real boy yet?

Comic of "For I will Consider My Cat, Jeoffry" by Christopher Smart

Comic

The Optimist

Some sources say this is by Ben Franklin

Flexible Hours

I Feel Like Flying

I Will Not Pinch Boys

The Last Issue of Sentence

The last issue of Sentence arrived today, and I am so sorry to see this magazine fold.  I love this issue, and I esp.  love the cover.  I suspect every prose poet from my generation owns this anthology, and it looks as beat up as the one in this picture.  The anthology was printed as cheaply as possible, as if designed to dissolve with reading. The pages turn brown and fall out.  The editor, Michael Benedikt, would not allow it to be reprinted.  It is one of the few books I own with a limited shelf life.

The Prose Poem is one of the great International anthologies, and it introduced me to writers such as Michaux, Jacob, Ponge, Eich, Cortazar, Jozsef, Szymborska, Herbert, and others.

Author Photo Comic

FaceTime

Interview with Shanna Compton, Editor of Bloof Books

http://blog.bestamericanpoetry.com/the_best_american_poetry/2014/01/meet-the-press-nin-andrews-in-conversation-with-shanna-compton-editor-of-bloof-books.html

Comic