Friday, September 30, 2011

Beano Gee and the Mystery Poetry Art

Artwork by Beano Gee

Well, here's a Friday conundrum for ya. An artist buddy of mine told me he found a piece he had done awhile back that was based on a poem, only it had been so long he completely forgot what poem it was. So, he came to me, me being the at work poetry guy. I puzzled and searched and guessed and struggled and came up with zilch.

A few days later, his addled brain pan spit back up the obscure bit of info, which wasn't all that obscure once he remembered it. That got me to thinking - I wonder if anybody else would know?

So, poetry mavens, here's the challenge: what poem is this piece of art based on?

To spice the pot (and get your own addled brain pan sizzling), I'll throw in a 15 issue subscription (or an extension to your current subscription) to Lilliput Review for anyone who can guess the poem or the first line (a bit tricky, that part, and something of a hint) AND the poet, or a 6 issue subscription for anyone who simply guesses the poet.

Reply either in the comments section below or directly to me via email (lilliput review AT gmail DOT org).

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

Recently, Curtis Dunlap (30 haiku by Curtis - just hit "next") over at Blogging Along Tobacco road did a nice introduction to haiku and senryu that is most definitely worth checking out. Though I don't agree with everything he says - put two haiku poets in a waiting room and they will find something to disagree about except their sly attentiveness to that ceiling fly - give it a look see. It is very worthwhile.

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

Anyone who follows this blog with regularity knows how very enthralled I am with the work of John Martone, one of the finest poets writing the short poem today. Here is a recent book by John, microscope field, in all its 96 page glory. It is full of wonder. A tip o' the hat to Scott Watson for pointing me toward it.



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

Finally, today's archival selection comes from Lilliput Review #178 and it is a beauty. Enjoy.





Hearing a flute song
The monk's hand pauses
Copying the sutra.
Furrowed brows, you are
Too young for such a look
Yosano Akiko
translated by Dennis Maloney









wafting through trees
a beggar's flute
a nightingale

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue





best,
Don



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

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 120 songs

Thursday, September 29, 2011

Frank Parker: In Memory



A fine tribute this morning to Frank Parker, over at Ron Silliman's blog.  Click each individual link (his name, the dates, the audio) for more info. 

Frank was very generous and supportive of me while I was in the process of putting together Past All Traps.  He read over the manuscript and supplied a wonderful blurb for the back cover.  Before he became ill, we had discussed featuring some work on his excellent Frank's Home blog.  It wasn't meant to be.

He is in my memory with great fondness.  Cheers, Frank.

with love,
Don

Click image to read text

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Annie Brodrick and Susan Diridoni: Wednesday Haiku, 37

Photo by J Cornelius





 Wednesday Haiku, Week #37



waning gibbous moon
showing in the morning sky
night bows to the day
Annie Brodrick








the sum of our visit the stars cluster
          Susan Diridoni








a gathering of stars--
children, grandchildren
great-great-grandchildren
Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue






best,
Don



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

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 120 songs


Monday, September 26, 2011

Charlie Mehrhoff: Monday Twitter Poem







Going nowhere.
Always packed and ready.
   Charlie Mehrhoff  in Lilliput Review #171









nowhere, nowhere
can a young scarecrow
be found
Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue









best,
Don



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

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 120 songs

Sunday, September 25, 2011

Cooksferry Queen: Issa's Sunday Service, #120


Cooksferry Queen by Richard Thompson on Grooveshark

This past week, a friend insisted I keep at it with two things: John Keats' poetry and Richard Thompson's music. I'm happy to say that both clicked and, in the later case, after a few years of insistence.

A tip of the hat to Che for his insistence and always spot-on taste.

The album that won me over was Mock Tudor and what was to be discovered there? Not one, not two, but three songs that qualify for the Sunday Service and today's is a beauty: "Cooksferry Queen." The litrock connection comes from a line that has been referenced in a previous selection. The Alice books seem to be an endless source for rock bands; along with the Bible, they have by far have provided the most tunes for this regular feature.

I got a bit of a charge out of the description of the song on Songfacts:

"The song is about a thug who gets dosed with acid and adopts the paisley."


There are a number of different videos of this song floating around; here's one I like a lot.





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

This week's archival poem comes from Lilliput Review #68, April 1995, by the esteemed small press legend, A. D. Winans. Enjoy.




Coffee Gallery Blues
I don't care how god
damn smart they are
I'm bored with their writing
for each other

Just the other day
one of them said
poetry isn't for
the masses

It's been raining
intellectual snobs
all day
long
A. D. Winans









the masses wait
but all in vain...
cuckoo
Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue









best,
Don



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

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 120 songs

Friday, September 23, 2011

Between the Chimes: Charles Trumbull


Wise, gentle, funny, and humble: that's some tall order in one poetry collection and #23 in the Hexagram Series from King's Road Press, Charles Trumbull's Between the Chimes, fits the bill..   Though a brief chapbook, at 14 pages with 32 poems, it displays all the qualities mentioned and is, indeed, very fine as a result.

Trumbull deals in everyday things, with an easy, often self-deprecating humor, reminiscent of Master Issa himself.  Like Issa, some of the poems are plainly what they are; others resonate far beyond their apparent subject.  Here's one with all those elements:

thinking deeply
about my principles—
a wave collapses


The poet's revelation is right on the page: the wave crashes, being as deeply philosophical as will ever be necessary in this life, snapping the poet to attention.   The spirit of haiku comes from a deep, meditative-like attention to things and, when that attention wanders, frequently, if we are lucky, nature calls us back.

There is a haiku about baseball, a subject I formally hated for poetry (until straightened out by Ed Markowski), two about graveyards, and another about elections.   Election Day, it seems to me is a "holiday" which often is captured wonderfully in haiku - somebody should think about a small collection of election poems someday, if it hasn't been already done.

line drive to center
all faces turn toward
the sunflower field


This poem is exactly why I was wrong about baseball and haiku.  What a beautiful little piece, drawing us into the nature element of the national past time and making sure that people know exactly what they are like.  For some reason, probably obvious, I thought about the delicious tennis scene in Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train.


nearly dusk . . .
the shadow of her tombstone
reaches his



One of two graveyard poems, "nearly dusk" is probably my favorite in the book.   It is at once literal, figurative, heart-wrenching, and lovely.  Also possibly dark, creepy, horrific and more.  It's your half glass of water: choose.


election posters
a neighborhood dog
marks his choice



Really, someone should do a small collection of election day poems.  This one is a beaut and would deserve a prominent place.


on my copy of
Robert's Rules of Order
a dried speck of blood


Somehow, this poem feels like it should have been placed (by me) before the graveyard poem.  One of the great virtues of these poems is their truth - they have a quality of the found poem about them, a satori-like state again in that true spirit of haiku of which this is a good example.   Also, in this case, it happens to be very funny, especially for anyone who has had to suffer through emotionally charged meetings governed by the thin veil of civilizing influence which Robert's Rules provides.


grocery line—
the dancer's feet
in fourth position



This fine ku catches the poet in the attentive mode - how often we miss the details in everyday mundane tasks such as standing in line, as suggested above in the wave poem.   A perfect little moment here.


pansies      we smile back


This is another personal favorite - plainly stated.  Four words, one moment, universal - live in it, dwell there, it's eternity.


between
the chimes of the clock
shooting star


Again, another moment ensnared, a suggestion of time stopped, if just for an instant. One might think of this as the unmeasured moment. This is the heart of haiku, the heart of life, the breath held, in, out, rest ... live.

It is noted in the prefatory material that the cover image for the chapbook is Hexagram 10, from the I Ching, entitled "Treading Carefully."  Here is the explication:

When treading upon the tail of a tiger, if it does not bite you have success.  For the weak to take a stand against the strong is not dangerous if it happens in good humour.

Looking back over the book and the poems highlighted in this post in light of the hexagram is potentially instructive.  The hexagram gives fair warning, and also a potential approach to a hostile environment.  Humor is a key; backing down not a particular option.

As another bard so aptly put it, "it's life and life only."


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


This week's poem comes from Lilliput Review, #177, December 2010.  Enjoy.



end
  I pull up a weed
  to find at bottom
  a heart rough
  and split
  earth dangling
  green
  shooting out
Christina Manweller






traveling geese--
the human heart, too
soars

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue







best,
Don



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

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 119 songs

 

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Patrick Sweeney and Tom Montag: Wednesday Haiku, Week 36

  



Wednesday Haiku, Week #36



aftershocks
holding my son
the roughness of his beard
Patrick Sweeney















Road bends
or does not.

I go with it.

Tom Montag












the beards of grasses
tickling me...
evening cool
Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue







best,
Don



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

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 119 songs

Monday, September 19, 2011

Constance Campbell: Monday Twitter Poem








even in daylight, these shadows find me
       Constance Campbell
                     from Lilliput Review #173










our shameful shadows!
in the long night walking
in vain
Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue












best,
Don



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

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 119 songs

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Pretty Good Year: Issa's Sunday Service, #119




Today's selection on the Sunday Service is a Tori Amos song, "Pretty Good Year," that was suggested by a reader for which he got two free issues of Lilliput Review. The Amos song lifts a phrase - "the eternal Footman" - from T. S. Eliot's "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," the line in question being "And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker".

"Prufrock" also provided a line for this previous Sunday Service song. There are lots more in allusions to Eliot in popular music and, no doubt, they will provide future songs for the Sunday Service. For the moment, how's about we settle in and listen to the poet take a turn himself:





If you'd like your Eliot ready with animation rather than stagnant pictures, here you are:





Perhaps your version would have shoeboxes for hats ... I know mine does. Shoeboxes and mighty plosives and a, um, broader interpretation.






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


This week's featured poem from the archive of Lilliput Review comes from #69, June 1995, by the master poet, Patrick Sweeney. Enjoy.





An 'anybody home?' afternoon silence
Patrick Sweeney








quite a feat--
in utter silence
the plum tree blooms
Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue






best,
Don



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

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 119 songs

Friday, September 16, 2011

Rumi: The Root of the Root of Your Self



I've been spending a little time with Rumi (as well as Keats - more on that some other time) and have found him calming, challenging, frustrating and all the things we expect of other human beings. Above all, he is philosophically inspirational, a lyric wonder that takes a back seat to no one.

The edition I'm reading, The Pocket Rumi, is one of those Shambhala Pocket Classics, which literally fits in your shirt pocket and was just a great little pickup when I was on the road in Seattle (thanks, Elliot Bay Book Company!). So here's a poem from that collection which grabbed me this week.


The Root of the Root of Your Self
Don't go away, come near
Don't be faithless, be faithful.
Find the antidote in the venom.
Come to the root of the root of
your self.

Molded of clay, yet kneaded
from the substance of certainty,
a guard at the Treasury of Holy Light—
come, return to the root of the root of
your self.
Once you get hold of selflessness,
you'll be dragged from your ego
and freed from many traps.
Come, return to the root of the root of
your self.

You are born from the children of
of God's creation,
but you have fixed your sight too low.
How can you be happy?
Come, return to the root of the root of
your self.

Although you are a talisman protecting
a treasure,
you are also the mine.
Open your hidden eyes
and come to the root of the root of
your self.

You were born from a ray of God's
majesty
and have the blessings of a good star.
Why suffer at the hands of things that
don't exist?
Come, return to the root of the root of
your self.

You are a ruby embedded in granite.
How long will you pretend it isn't true?
We can see it in your eyes.
Come to the root of the root of
your self.

You came here from the presence of
that fine Friend,
a little drunk, but gentle, stealing our
hearts
with that look so full of fire; so
come, return to the root of the root of
your self.

Our master and host, Shamsi Tabrizi,
has put the eternal cup before you.
Glory be to God, what a rare wine!
So come, return to the root of the root
of your self
Rumi, translated by Kabir Hilminski


Note: Shamsi Tabrizi was Rumi's teacher


Find the antidote in the venom. The secret is in plain sight. Open your eyes. Light up. Smile until you can't smile anymore. And keep smiling. Find the antidote in the venom.


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


This week's featured poem from the Archive comes from Lilliput Review, #176 and is a beautiful little gem from Leonard J. Cirino. Enjoy.





The Road Going Nowhere after So Chongju

The road going somewhere always leads to an end.
Sadness, like a red blossom, also comes to an end.
The limbs of a willow bend to the stream, the moon
descends. Sorrow, an ache laced with opium, and joy
that never ends. The floating worlds go on in a dream.
What of the taste and stiff scent of blood?
Its stain? The road long coming home?
Leonard J. Cirino







cherry blossoms
in a nook in this floating
world of craving

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue






best,
Don



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

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 118 songs

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Kate MacQueen and Peter Rennick: Wednesday Haiku, Week, #35




Wednesday Haiku, Week #34



smile lines
beneath the sad years
crocuses
Kate MacQueen








singing to the tulips
the child bows
the tulips bow back
Peter Rennick














bowing his head
in the scattering blossoms...
frog
Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue





best,
Don



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

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 118 songs

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Wednesday Haiku update ...

Art by John Tenniel

The relatively new feature, Wednesday Haiku, has been a resounding success and I'd like to thank everyone who has sent work along, endured my finickiness, and decided editorial quirks, enjoyed the entries, and just generally had a good time.

And the good times will continue. The feature has, however been so successful that I've got a near 7 month backlog. All this, from an editor's POV, is pretty impressive, considering I limit submissions to one per poet. One of the functions of this feature is to offer web only followers of the blog and Lilliput Review a chance to participate since I otherwise do not accept email submissions.

As I said, a big success.

The result of that success is that I feel, in fairness to the poets and in the spirit of net itself, I'd like to get the turnaround to posting down from 7 months. So I'm going to change the Wednesday feature to two poems per posting.

For those who are sensitive to what I try to do with the feature, this may be more than just a slight change. However, change is a good thing - right? Nothing stays the same, we all come and go, and this just seems the right thing to do.

I'm not sure when I'll start the double feature Wednesday haiku - see, it already seems better, it kind of has a new name, reflecting a new idea. I may start tomorrow.

Yes, I really do run this operation day-to-day and never really have an idea where I'm heading till I arrive. I've written a poem or two about that, but that's another story.

So, I thought I'd give everybody a head's up. More soon.




temple nuns--
it takes two
yanking the radish

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue





best,
Don



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

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 118 songs

Monday, September 12, 2011

Ayaz Daryl Nielsen: Monday Twitter Poem

Photo by Andreas Trepte





kestrel, hovering ..
so, too,
the moment
Ayaz Daryl Nielsen 
       from Lilliput Review, #175










evening--
a bird of prey flies home
into blossoms

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue








best,
Don



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

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 118 songs

Sunday, September 11, 2011

I Zimbra: Issa's Sunday Service, #118





This week's song on the Service is the Talking Heads decidedly odd and amazingly hooky "I Zimbra." The song's lyrics are an adaptation of Dadaist Hugo Ball's poem "Gadji beri bimba." The original poem was a UK Guardian poem of the week back in 2009; the article is all you really need to know about the poem and, by extension the song.

For those who prefer their web experience sans click-through, suffice it to say that the poem, Gadji beri bimba, is one of the best-known examples of "verses without words."






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

This week's featured poem comes from Lilliput Review, #71 way back in 1995. It is, as its title suggests, for Phil Levine, who all these 16 years later is our new poet laureate. So there you go, this one's for you, Phil:



The Performance/For Phil Levine
Outside the rain begins
in small hives of water
dancing where footsteps
make a spoon in the earth

there is even
a boy who plays
the violin in a field
no one has been
able to stop him
baloian








singing insects, too
make music
in this world
Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue







best,
Don



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

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 118 songs

Saturday, September 10, 2011

Call for Mail Artists and Micropoets

What follows is a general call for mail artists and micropoets.  I received the following intriguing email I thought I'd pass along for those who like to play:

I am in Kofu, Japan on Artist Residency at AIRY gallery now and am hosting an open call for artists and micropoets (haiku / haiga inclusive) to send postcard designs and feature in an exhibition.  The instructions are here if this is of any interest to you and your readers.  :)
Kind regards
Juliea

And the Twitter post: "open call for artists, poets, designers, photographers ... send a postcard to japan! feature in an exhibition!"  If you are interested, there is a deadline coming up.

For instructions on how to participate, take a look at Juliea's page on the project.

And, of course, Lilliput Review is always looking for poems: guidelines are here.

Finally, today's Issa email poem:





they praise Buddha too--
frogs on a rock
in a row
   Issa
   translated by David G. Lanoue









best,
Don



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

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 117 songs

Friday, September 9, 2011

H. F. Noyes: "raking aside leaves"



The passing of H. F. "Tom" Noyes last year is a great loss to the haiku community.   His work and his commentary were always of the highest order.  I was delighted to come across a volume in the red moon press postscripts series, raking aside leaves by Noyes, at the recent Haiku North American Conference in Seattle.

His work is grounded in principle, both of philosophy and form.  When I read his haiku, invariably I think of the sureness of foot and purpose in the translations of R. H. Blyth.

This writer could bestow no greater compliment.

Religion aside
there are plum blossoms
and pussy willows

In this poem, the above comparison to Blyth is obvious for those who know him.  Though no where near as great a compliment, of this one I would add I wish I wrote it.   Aside is the swing word here; bring no previous bias and a reader can see it may be taken at least two ways.  Has religion been put deliberately aside (perhaps not to be returned to) or is the experience of the plum blossoms and pussy willows a religious experience, plus so much more.

Lovely.  A poem one might end a war with, if politicians were poets, or even simply sensitive readers.

spiral nebulae
through the telescope's sites
longing to love

Here the word we pause at, or miss entirely, or stumble over, is the lowly little to.   Of course it should be for, right, longing for love?   In a poem of nine words, the reader must know that the choice of each individual word is especially deliberate - no slapdash business here.

So, why to?  First, we must look at the set up - looking through a telescope.  What, or how, does this evoke to?  It makes us think of distance, how very far away something is to need a telescope to see it.  That distance conjures loneness.  We all know the feeling of vastness in the night, the infinity of space and how very small, indeed, we feel in its presence.   And then also to on a personal level turns our attention inward.  One longs for love as in one wishes to be love - here, the speaker wishes to love, which may seem a subtle distinction but, when one is alone, it is a big one.

Perhaps the biggest of all.

Now, another aspect of love is examined:

falling in love
some botch we are making
of the tea ceremony

This poem captures that very tentative time, most keenly felt on a first date but also on other auspicious occasions.  What the poet sketches, puts into high (and humorous) relief, is the dichotomy between the meditative like attention one devotes to the details of the tea ceremony and the bull in the china shop sweep otherwise known as love.

Could consciousness and self-consciousness be more perfectly contrasted?


raking leaves aside
on the backyard pond
I release the moon


There are lots of poems out there about the moon reflected in water; Li Po's immediately comes to mind.  But Noyes takes another tack, releasing instead of possessing the cherished object.  There is an implied motion here that suggests a lovely image, indeed.


As the water sneaks
through the beaver dam
the past returns


The literal and the metaphoric dovetail neatly in "As the water sneaks," as they so often do in these poems.  Does the image itself of the leaking dam recall something from the narrator's past, or is it the water that returns again, or both?  Balanced in this poem are the moment chronicled and the past it recalls, a subtle sequencing of contiguous time.

spring cleaning
your head-mark on the wall
small comfort now


With a note of finality, this poem again ensnares a particular moment and its resonating past.  A poem of loss, with little comfort and, it would seem, some striking sadness.

One of the great maxim's of classical haiku is the moment.  It is, in fact, all there is of life - no past, no present, just the moment.  Yes, there is memory, and it is poignant and influential and real, but only in that moment.  There is no separate existence outside the moment.

Tom Noyes is a master of the moment and, in this moment, he is poignant, influential, and real.


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


This week's featured poem comes from Lilliput Review, #174, June 2010.  It is a short poem I admire very much, the closing couplet encompassing one of life's great, largely unlearned, lessons.  Enjoy.




     Night, I Stand At The Edge
of another new motel parking lot,
the gravel collected from the Ice Age.

Across the Interstate, glow the names
Americans recognizeHunan, Honda,
Taco Bell.  In the neonenough like moonlight
from a hill of impeccable grains at my feet,

ants pour in continual ceremony, none
knowing where they are, none lost.
                       Robert King








the ants' road
from peaks of clouds
to here

   Issa
   translated by David G. Lanoue








best,
Don



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

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 117 songs
 

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Donna Fleischer: Wednesday Haiku, #34

 Photo by Alex O'Neal





Wednesday Haiku, Week #34



lady bug
i save you
you save me
Donna Fleischer









on the tip
of Buddha's nose...
a fart bug
Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue




Stink bugs, Japanese style




Though it is tempting to wonder if the fart bug is similar to the stink bug causing so much commotion in the Eastern US these days, I don't think they are the same.    However, for a fine gathering of fart bug haiku and senryu, make a stop over at paraverse's very special page.

For those, who can't quite get enough of this stuff, here you go:






best,
Don 



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

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 117 songs

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

A Reading

Photo by Karen Lillis



Hemingway's Reading
 


Since I began reading again, after a 20 plus year layoff, a number of folks not local to Pittsburgh - old friends, poetry folks, casual acquaintances - have expressed an interest in hearing me read my work live. The only previous  recordings are an anonymous round robin reading on the radio last fall on WRCT, via Speed & Briscoe Press, and a reading from Hemingway's way back in 1987, before I found my medium and voice, if you will.

Until now.

The above Hemingway's reading link is an mp3 of a brief reading - about 7 minutes total - I did at Hemingway's Bar here in Pittsburgh back on July 26th. So, for those uninterested, please pardon the indulgence. For all others, hope you enjoy.

Thanks again to Joan and Jimmy for the invite, and Joan's friend Don for the fine recording.






even while pooping
reading his almanac...
plum blossoms
Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue








best,
Don



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

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 117 songs

Monday, September 5, 2011

Jean Tomasko: Monday Twitter Poem

Photo by Staffan Enbom



the leaves of your tree
fall in my yard―what can I
give you in return?
Jean Tomasko









fresh new leaves--
the cat and the crow
quarrel
Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue










best,
Don



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

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 117 songs




Sunday, September 4, 2011

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



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

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 117 songs


Friday, September 2, 2011

Pittsburgh Magazine Review of Past All Traps



Above is a copy of the new review in Pittsburgh Magazine of Past All Traps. You can go directly to a browsable copy of the magazine at this link. Many thanks to Kris Collins for his salient review.

Since I've been keeping busy working on a forthcoming chapbook by Ed Baker, a number of local readings, a couple of reviews, getting ready for the new issues of Lilliput, and a backlog half way back to the beginning of time, I'll leave you today with a few songs by Allen Ginsberg, whose joyful gnomishness, which variously chided, challenged, caressed, and cajoled collective human consciousness, I seem to be missing particularly these days.


William Blake's "The Nurse's Song"



Father Death Blues


Hare Krishna Sung to William Buckley



The looks on Buckley's and Ginsberg's faces tell the entire story - there is a kind of ecstatic, astonished bliss on Big Bill's and a ecstatic, challenging bliss on Allen's - truly beauty personified.


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#41
   In the folded
   Red lips of the rose
   Please do not place
   Any poem which lacks
   The fragrance of spirit
   Yosano Akiko
   translated by Dennis Maloney







dangling in
the yellow roses
the bull's balls

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue




best,
Don



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

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 116 songs