A Belated Memorial Day Tribute

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Untitled Poem [“Speciously individual ...”]

Speciously individual
like a solid piece of spit
floating in a cuspidor
I dream of free bravery
but am a social being.
I should do something
to get out of here
but float around in the culture
wondering what it will grow.

by Alan Dugan

I found this on Poetry Foundation website. It fit my mood at the time.

Sister Rosetta Tharpe

I was listening the bonus cd from Bob Dylan's new album. The cd is an entire show from Bob's XM radio show Theme Time Radio Hour. It is great to hear Bob introduce some of the more obscure tracks that he clearly loves. One of the songs was Sister Rosetta Thorpe and Bob suggested to You Tube her and check it out. So I did.

Beautiful without Money

Flowers in the yard before the winds came and beheaded them all.

Another poem from Poetry Daily, as N.P.M. winds down. I have to brag about some scores made at the book store in the public library. I found The Oxford Book of American Poetry for three bucks and a signed copy of T.C. Boyle's Drop City (endorsed to Ed). Although an unsigned Boyle might be a rarer find in this town.

Beautiful without Money

Suddenly fatigued among French
women in the Roman

Empire rooms of the museum,
I fall out of circulation

on a bench. Bronze
heads, helms, a Byzantine

spoon, sixth century, engraved,
attributed to Virgil: O handsome

youth, do not believe too much
in beauty; you cannot be

beautiful without money ... women fall,
tucking skirts, onto my bench,

being suddenly flesh and scent,
and do not speak to me.

T. Zachary Cotler

The Paris Review
Spring 2009

“Do You Have Any Advice For Those of Us Just Starting Out?"

Give up sitting dutifully at your desk. Leave
your house or apartment. Go out into the world.

It's all right to carry a notebook but a cheap
one is best, with pages the color of weak tea
and on the front a kitten or a space ship.

Avoid any enclosed space where more than
three people are wearing turtlenecks. Beware
any snow-covered chalet with deer tracks
across the muffled tennis courts.

Not surprisingly, libraries are a good place to write.
And the perfect place in a library is near an aisle
where a child a year or two old is playing as his
mother browses the ranks of the dead.

Often he will pull books from the bottom shelf.
The title, the author's name, the brooding photo
on the flap mean nothing. Red book on black, gray
book on brown, he builds a tower. And the higher
it gets, the wider he grins.

You who asked for advice, listen: When the tower
falls, be like that child. Laugh so loud everybody
in the world frowns and says, "Shhhh."

Then start again.

Ron Koertge
from Fever, 2006
Red Hen Press

This is from the Poetry 180 website hosted by The Library of Congress started by Billy Collins while he was Poet Laureate.

Hold Steady Live

Since I missed the show here in town I will have to settle for this new live album.

"This is a collection that seeks to mark how women poets made a poetry that, in two decades, altered the face of American poetry forever.... A new language began—not a language that was linguistically new (although there are scholars who make that argument), but a language new to them. New to us, I should say, because in the process of speaking what was hidden, we began to identify with one another as women, to become a 'we.'"—Honor Moore



This is the latest volume that I received from the Library of America's American Poets Project. Poetry Daily is highlighting this volume by reprinting the entire introduction by Honor Moore on its website as a weekly prose feature as part of its National Poetry Month celebration.

Poem-A-Day

Goldfish Are Ordinary


At the pet store on Court Street,
I search for the perfect fish.
The black moor, the blue damsel,
cichlids and neons. Something
to distract your sadness, something
you don't need to love you back.
Maybe a goldfish, the flaring tail,
orange, red-capped, pearled body,
the darting translucence? Goldfish
are ordinary, the boy selling fish
says to me. I turn back to the tank,
all of this grace and brilliance,
such simplicity the self could fail
to see. In three months I'll leave
this city. Today, a chill in the air,
you're reading Beckett fifty blocks
away, I'm looking at the orphaned
bodies of fish, undulant and gold fervor.
Do you want to see aggression?
the boy asks, holding a purple beta fish
to the light while dropping handfuls
of minnows into the bowl. He says,
I know you're a girl and all
but sometimes it's good to see.
Outside, in the rain, we love
with our hands tied,
while things tear away at us.

by Stacie Cassarino

From the Poets.org website celebrating National Poetry Month. I am little behind in reading them. An email delivery option is also available. Not be confused with Poetry Daily which has its own thing going on.

Where the Wild Things Are

I really dig the Arcade Fire tune too.

"Sit, Ubu, Sit"

A toy that S. bought for her nephew. The cats were wary at first but since it did not chase theme around the house and try to eat them like the last dog that they saw did they ignored it.

The Dead Weather

Jack White's new band. Enjoy the weekend.

First flower to show up in the yard. The tulips are making progress though.

Spring is like a perhaps hand


III

Spring is like a perhaps hand
(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere)arranging
a window,into which people look(while
people stare
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here)and

changing everything carefully

spring is like a perhaps
Hand in a window
(carefully to
and fro moving New and
Old things,while
people stare carefully
moving a perhaps
fraction of flower here placing
an inch of air there)and

without breaking anything.

by E. E. Cummings

Lá Fhéile Pádraig

Picture of a beam in the Guinness storehouse in Dublin from Wikiepedia.

Joshua Tree

from File magazine. (just keeping my page alive). I think its been 20 years since I drove through the park.

The Girl You Lost to Cocaine

I picked up this record by Sia at a Starbucks when I was traveling for work. One of the music blogs (Pop Matters) posted several of her videos so it was a pleasant reminder to go back and give it a listen again. Enjoy!

"I need a camera to my eye, reminding which lies have I been hiding"

To paraphrase the words of Matt L., "Between you and Churlita taking pictures the other night at the Dublin I am surprised no one had a seizure from all the flashes."

"April prepares her green traffic light and the world thinks Go. "

in Just-


in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman

whistles far and wee

and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer
old balloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it's
spring
and

the

goat-footed

balloonMan whistles
far
and
wee

E. E. Cummings

"It's a semi-automatic, Believers are ecstatic... "

This is a postcard from a friend back in Conn. that I received on Monday. I do not want to know what he was doing in Kentucky. I spent the morning preparing slow-cooker chili and listening to the remastered version of Pavement's Brighten the Corners: Nicene Creedence Edition.

St. Valentines Day Massacre

This bike has been chained to this parking meter for about six months now. My blog is starting to look like this bike. If it wasn't for Google Reader and my music widget it would never get updated. More effort is required in all aspects of my endeavors. I am planning on not smoking cigarettes after my birthday passes on Sunday. This will also probably require staying out of my favorite pubs for a while or at least not drinking as that is my main trigger. So enough of all that...Happy Valentine's Day!

Fake Plastic Trees by Jeff Tweedy

I ganked this from Muzzle of Bees.

And check out this forthcoming Wilco movie, Ashes of American Flags

Army Cats from The New Yorker

Army Cats


1.

Over by the cemetery next to the CP

you could see them in wild catmint going crazy:

I watched them roll and wriggle, paw it, lick it,

chew it, leap about, pink tongues stuck out, drooling.



Cats in the tanks’ squat shadows lounging.

Or sleeping curled up under gun turrets.

Hundreds of them sniffing or licking

long hind legs stuck in the air,



great six-toed brutes fixing you with a feral,

slit-eyed stare . . . everywhere ears twitching,

twitching as the armor plate expanding

in the heat gave off piercing little pings.



Cat invasion of the mind. Cat tribes

running wild. And one big pregnant

female comes racing through weeds to pounce

between the paws of a marble dog



crouching on a grave and sharpens

her claws against his beard of moss

before she goes all silky, luxuriously

squirming right under the dog’s jaws,



and rolls over to expose her swollen belly.

Picture her with gold hoop earrings

and punked-out nose ring like the cat goddess Bast,

bronze kittens at her feet, the crowd drinking wildly,



women lifting up their skirts as she floats down

the Nile, a sistrum jangling in her paw.

Then come back out of it and sniff

her ointments, Lady of Flame, Eye of Ra.



2.

Through the yard the tanks come gunning,

charioteers laughing, goggles smeared with dust

and sun, scattering the toms slinking

along the blast wall holding back the waves



from washing away white crosses on the graves,

the motors roaring through the afternoon

like a cat fuck yowling on and on.

The gun turrets revolving in the cats’ eyes



swivel and shine, steel treads clanking,

sending the cats flying in an exodus

through brown brittle grass, the stalks

barely rippling as they pass.



3.

After the last car bomb killed three soldiers

the Army Web site labelled them “martyrs.”

Four civilians killed at checkpoints. Three on the airport road.

A young woman blown up by a grenade.



Facts and more facts . . . until the dead ones

climb up out of the graves, gashes on faces

or faces blown away like sandblasted stone

that in the boarded-up museums’



fractured English “leaves the onlooker

riddled and shaken, nothing but a pathetic gaping . . .”

And then I remember the ancient archers

frozen between reverence and necessity—



who stare down the enemy, barbarians,

as it’s told, who nailed sacred cats to their shields,

knowing their foes outraged in their piety

would throw down their bows and wail like kittens

by Tom Sleigh

Saddlebacking is the new black. Look it up.

Since I am using the person who introduced me to this band's computer to burn music I thought I should share this. First glimpsed on the I Am Fuel blog.

photo ©2009 sharad haksar (from File Magazine)

I seem to be ignoring the blog because of facebook. I will make more of an effort here. Still reading all the Lippman and Hiaasen books I can get from public library at the moment although sidetracked by the book about the circus fire I found on discard shelf. This is probably funniest commercial I have seen in a while. (Warning: Animal balloon sex is involved.) Enjoy the new Neko single from Paste Magazine sampler. Record is due out March 1st.

Neko Case- People Got A Lotta Nerve

My winter retreat on the Black Sea. An Iowa dacha sans waterfront. The new Odessa is Kalona.

I have drifted into Kalona proper to use Internet at the library and spend time in a nice little coffee shop. The last few days I have been shacked up with a stack of novels back at the farm. I am now a huge fan of Carl Hiaasen, his book Skinny Dip, is one of the those laugh out loud Florida farces. I don't know why I have never read him before. Too many books, so little time I suppose. From there I moved on to his Basket Case, which includes lyrics of a song written by the late great Warren Zevon which was included on his record, My Ride is Here.

I have also been spending time in Baltimore thanks to Laura Lippman's Tess Monaghan series. Start with Baltimore Blues.

Some cows from my friend's farm where I am staying to house sit his dog while he is in Florida for work. Not a fair trade but its not too bad to get out of town and enjoy the bucolic life.

Happy Boxing Day

New Year

Skiing in July,
fishing in February,

the days disjoint
and groove,

a meltdown of months,
a mind out of whack.

I'm still back at August
where the Beaujolais

that came
from 35 villages

fit sideways
inside my head,

the dorsal fin of it,
the brain slowed

por fin to belief.
Between then and now

the numbers,
an 8-Ball routine

jacked on polyethylene,
trees unmercifully diminished,

choked by maneuverings
and light.

I'll release last year
in May

when I shovel
the driveway

and go geologic,
a Paleolithic hell—

if each season
were twice as long

the year
would wear me well.

Teresa Leo

The Halo Rule
Elixir Press


I spent most of last night with Humphrey Bogart on his birthday as TCM was showing my favorite movies of his (Casablanca, The Big Sleep, The Maltese Falcon, The African Queen). The clip above played in between movies and was very moving like the clip they do on the Oscars.

Christmas Day was pleasantly spent on couch watching television and finishing Amitav Gosh's amazing Sea of Poppies. The only downer is that the book ended on a cliff hanger and I must wait for the next book to come out.

I talked to some of my family back in Connecticut and was relieved to hear that presents had arrived in time. I picked out some of the pretty Ugly Dolls, Ox and Puglee, for my niece and youngest nephew.

The poem is due to be retired from the Poetry Daily archive and it is likely that this will be my last post of 2008 so its kind of a mixed bag. Peace.

"James Bond is what every man would like to be and what every woman would like to have between her sheets." - Raymond Chandler

Hyperbole aside, Chandler is mostly right. I saw this on the new book shelf at the library and decided its been too long since I have read any Fleming. This will go well towards warming your cockles by the fire.

Alphabet Juice

This could easily be my favorite book of the year. It is definitely at the top of my gift list for those who love words, usage, and etymology. Plus its hilarious. There is an except here.

I know I talked about Iowa City being recognized as a city of writers but I think it is clearly one of the best cities for readers. I have managed to find numerous steals at the local public library's retail store. Someone recently dumped what looks like their entire non-fiction collection and I happily snapped up several wonderful biographies (Morgan, Rockefeller, Teddy Roosevelt) as well as some great collections of essays, Jacques Barzun's From Dawn to Decadence and Clive James' Cultural Amnesia.

Despite the quote about cultural and reaching for ones revolver (James covers this a bit) Cultural Amnesia is an amazing concentration of erudition. I can't believe I have never read much of James before this. I can not recommend this book highly enough. Like Blount's book it is perfectly suited to skip around and dip into. It will also lead one to at least another several dozen books suggested by its author. lector emptor.

Sea of Poppies is also a feast of words and one of the few novels I have come across that comes with its own Chrestomathy. (Which is online at Amitav Ghosh's webpage.) It turns out this is the first book of an intended trilogy which means one will have to wait patiently for the story to continue. Drat!

He took down the Decembrists and Kanye; Who's next?

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Operation Humble Kanye - Stephen Beats Kanye

Colbert at Christmas
Colbert Christmas DVD

Green Screen
Bill O'Reilly Interview

Modern Skirts

December has arrived bringing with it the first blanketing of snow for our fair city. I had a good time over Thanksgiving. Wednesday night at the last minute I was talked into going to see a hypnotist at a local club. I almost went under but some one's drunken fiance brought the bouncer over to our table and broke my concentration.As it was the performer also had to come over bring two of us fully back awake as we were partially hypnotized.

One of our group did end up on stage and even became the closing act. After enjoying the series of minor humiliations of others I am so glad I was not one of them. There would of been a video of me hypnotized to imagine that I had no genitalia on YouTube about 20 minutes after the show ended.

So after a long Wednesday night Thursday was a relaxing day of great food, a croquet match, several rounds of euchre, and getting beaten down in Foosball. I made a pumpkin cheesecake that came out okay even though I forgot the bourbon whip cream topping.

The song now most stuck in my head is the single, Soft Pedals, from the Athens based band Modern Skirts forthcoming record. I heard it on the new Paste Magazine sampler. The new album is produced by REM's Mike Mills and Cracker's David Lowery. Check it out here from Aquarium Drunkard blog. If you happen to be in Atlanta for New Year's Eve they will be playing with Cracker and Young MC. Not too shabby a line up.

Happy Thanksgiving

(Cover by N.C. Wyeth)

Home


I didn't know I was grateful
for such late-autumn
bent-up cornfields

yellow in the after-harvest
sun before the
cold plow turns it all over

into never.
I didn't know
I would enter this music

that translates the world
back into dirt fields
that have always called to me

as if I were a thing
come from the dirt,
like a tuber,

or like a needful boy. End
Lonely days, I believe. End the exiled
and unraveling strangeness.

Bruce Weigl

I will not make it back to see the family in New England for Thanksgiving so the sentiment of the poem is more for the last time I was back in Connecticut two years ago. This year it will be spent in my adopted home with friends here in Iowa. I would like to send out best wishes to all those spending the holiday with their loved ones and families. I hope to see you all sooner than later.

Boston Spaceships

Robert Pollard's latest post Guided By Voices project. I think he also has another band with a record coming out soon and likely a couple of solo records. He puts almost as many records as Joyce Carol Oates writes books. This video is one of four submitted by fans. The rest are at the Boston Spaceships site.

Iowa City Named World City of Literature

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has designated Iowa City, Iowa, the world's third City of Literature, making the community part of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network.
"This is at once a celebration of the literary riches and resources of Iowa City and a spur to action," said University of Iowa International Writing Program Director Christopher Merrill, who led the UI Writing University committee that submitted the city's proposal. "We look forward to working with our new partners in the Creative Cities network -- to forging dynamic relationships with writers, artists and others committed to the life of discovery. This is a great day for Iowa City."
Iowa City joins Edinburgh, Scotland, and Melbourne, Australia, as UNESCO Cities of Literature.

Here is a link to a video of Marvin Bell reading his poem, "Writers in Cafe", that accompanied the application. Also a pdf of the poem.

Pedroia wins AL MVP award

Congrats Dustin. He just missed sending the Red Sox to back to back World Series.

“And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks"

William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac. Photo by Ginsberg 1953

This book is mostly a curiosity long known to exist but withheld from publication for numerous reasons including the wishes of Lucien Carr himself. All the principles are dead so now it comes out. After reading the first half I wouldn't recommend it for any one's holiday shopping list but for fans it's worth checking out just to see their early styles.

"Now, the making of a good compilation tape is a very subtle art. "

Another music mix site, Mixwit. I have only played around with it for a few minutes after running across Bob Mould's latest DJ Mix. I was trying to make a mini-mix of current faves; the new Lucinda Williams duet with Elvis Costello Jailhouse Tears, a Loudon Wainwright track since he is town tonight, and a cool song by Teitur, Catherine the Waitress. Not sure about how the whole thing works but I love the part about designing your own tapes and you tube like linkage.

Veteran's Day (Belated)

American Life in Poetry: Column 189


On Swearing

In Normandy, at Point Du Hoc,
where some Rangers died,
Dad pointed to an old man
20 feet closer to the edge than us,
asking if I could see
the medal the man held
like a rosary.
As we approached the cliff
the man's swearing, each bulleted
syllable, sifted back
toward us in the ocean wind.
I turned away,
but my shoulder was held still
by my father's hand,
and I looked up at him
as he looked at the man.


In celebration of Veteran's Day, here is a telling poem by Gary Dop, a Minnesota poet. The veterans of World War II, now old, are dying by the thousands. Here's one still with us, standing at Normandy, remembering. -Ted Kooser

I did not get to post in time for Veteran's Day yesterday so here is the ALP column for this week and thanks to all veterans of the past and to those of the future who are currently serving. It was a good day for war movies yesterday as I flipped back and forth between The Bridge On the River Kwai and The Guns of Navarone, followed later with long stretches of Midway.

More Good News...

Photo Credit: David Scrivner/The Daily Iowan. Iowa sophomore Daniel Murray kicks the winning field goal for the Hawkeyes from 31 yards out on Saturday, Nov. 8, 2008. Murray's field goal put Iowa ahead of Penn. State 24-23 with one second left in the game

A nice turn of events this week. I did not brave the weather to see the game in person but enjoyed it from the comfort of a cozy sofa while reading the DeMille potboiler.

'Nuff said. (I won't mention the weather today in consideration of those trapped indoors.)

One of Saturn's moons, Enceladus. (Photo from NASA site. More at Boston Globe here.)

I wish I had my camera with me to capture how perfect it is outside today here in Iowa City. There are long lines here at the library lobby for the early voting stations. This along with the weather seem to bode well for Election Day tomorrow. (Knock on wood.)

I finished Tony Horwitz's book this morning and again still highly recommend it. Check out the website for the book. He also includes a thorough section on notes and an extensive bibliography for further reading. American Journeys is one of the online sites he mentions as one of the best compilations by and about explorers.

I am off to find another book and head outdoors.

Chicago Ten

My weekend was fairly sedate. I ended up going to the Sarah Vowell reading at the Englert on Friday night and she was funny as anticipated. I enjoyed the book especially since part of it talks about the area in Southeastern Connecticut where I grew up and where my immediate family still lives. It would have been nice to have my copy autographed but crowd was too large so we chose Indian food over a long line of gushing fans and book store owners with twenty copies of each her books. I am continuing the early American theme with the Horwitz book, A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World.

I caught the above documentary on PBS and the animated portions created from transcripts of the trail perfectly captured the circus like atmosphere. I recommend seeing it. Saturday night I got talked into playing poker at the local American Legion by a friend who had to cancel at the last minute. I stuck around anyways but didn't win anything in the tournament. I did have some fun drinking cheap beer and playing for small stakes with other tourney washouts.

Music wise I am currently cranking up the latest Lucinda Williams album. Very good and a return to form circa Car Wheels on a Gravel Road. The new record Little Honey includes guest musicians include Charlie Louvin, Elvis Costello, Matthew Sweet, Susanna Hofs and others.

Some Reservations

Photo by Melanie Dunea

From the book featured at right that I found on the new book shelf at library. After reading the introduction by Bourdain and seeing his picture I could not resist the book. (Bourdain's recipe included in the book is for bone marrow and salad). A local cook recently loaned me a copy of Don't Try This At Home: Culinary Castrophes from the World's Greatest Chefs, a lot of the chefs are included in both books so it was good to put faces to names (among other body parts).

Bob Mould- Sound on Sound

A clip from Bob Mould solo show. These images were being screened behind him as he played. Glad someone posted this. I meant link to this last week but I seem to be getting worse about timely posting. Must try harder or fail better as the man said.

Avett Brothers

Saw this on a few music blogs. Bartender at the Dublin turned me on to these guys. The Silver Jews are at Picador tonight. Thinking about going if it's not too expensive.

"Watching"

photo ©2008 leah bennetti from File Magazine

Ah, Fall! This is the exact time of year to be in Maine. Not sure where this picture was taken but Maine is where I would like to be. Baxter State Park... I have rambled about this before.

The Golden Years

All I do these drawn-out days
is sit in my kitchen at Pheasant Ridge
where there are no pheasants to be seen
and last time I looked, no ridge.

I could drive over to Quail Falls
and spend the day there playing bridge,
but the lack of a falls and the absence of quail
would only remind me of Pheasant Ridge.

I know a widow at Fox Run
and another with a condo at Smokey Ledge.
One of them smokes, and neither can run,
so I’ll stick to the pledge I made to Midge.

Who frightened the fox and bulldozed the ledge?
I ask in my kitchen at Pheasant Ridge.

by Billy Collins

Sigur Rós

Muzzle of Bees had a Sigur Rós post with more videos and mp3s. I just experienced listening to their latest album cranked up while going through a car wash. It felt like a stoner move.

"Feelin' Minnesota..."

I ganked the picture of the Minneapolis Sculpture Gardens off of Wikipedia. We didn't actually go here on this trip. Also this was coincidentally a postcard I just mailed to Doolittle back in New England. I'll see if I get some photos tonight.

At the last minute I got pulled into a road trip to Minnesota. We stopped off at mutual friend's house here in Rochester last night and are heading into the Twin Cities to see the band Sigur Ros tonight. Should be fun even if I don't know the music all that well. This will be a short turn around as my friend has to fly out of Iowa tomorrow so we head back right after show. Not looking forward to that drive.

Spain- On the Road Again

I left house today to return books and videos to library after watching the Red Sox win, all but clinching a playoff spot. I also wanted to avoid the updates crawling across the bottom of the television screen indicating that the Patriots were being drubbed by the heretofore hapless Dolphins. To add ineptitude to insult, I find myself mired in last place in my inaugural fantasy football season and it doesn't look like I will be climbing out of the cellar this week or in the near future.

Spain would be a good place to escape to. The clip above is from a show on PBS I lucked into finding. It was the first episode of a new series with Mario Batali, Mark Bittman, Gweneth Paltrow. and Claudia Bassols eating there way around Spain. (Guest appearances by Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.) I enjoyed it and look forward to the rest of the series. He is promoting a companion cookbook. Batali, not Quixote.

Speaking of Spain, I am also hooked on the cooking/travelogue series by Chef José Andrés, Made in Spain. I really want the soundtrack! I should ask the public library to order them.

North Korea

High-level North Korean officials take part in a mass meeting celebrating the country's 60th birthday in this picture distributed by North Korea's official news agency KCNA in Pyongyang September 8, 2008. The portrait in the huge North Korean national flag is the state founder and "Great Leader" Kim-Il Sung. The right side letters read, "Celebrate 60th birthday". North Korea's foundation day falls on September 9, 2008. (REUTERS/KCNA)

I saw this link from Boston Globe's website on the photography blog Conscientious. I would love to visit North Korea and it's been almost twenty years since I was stationed in South Korea it would be great to return as a civilian.

Sarah Vowell's book led to me check out the Broadway recording of the musical she referred to in the preface that I quoted. (Assassins!). I also found a DVD copy of 1776 which Vowell attended at Ford's Theater which she prefaces by saying,"Going to Ford's Theater to watch the play is like going to Hooters for the food.'' But then she gets hooked on the musical despite her obsession with Lincoln's seat.

Badlands

photo ©2008 tim carpenter from File Magazine

I was in the middle of a late night poker session Saturday night when someone phoned another player with the news that the writer David Foster Wallace had killed himself. We were unable to confirm it at the time and I did not hear all the details until Sunday night. He will be missed. I never finished his novel Infinite Jest but I really enjoyed his essays and his erudition. His review of Garner's Modern American Usage is a classic example. Wallace also had several entries in The Writer's Thesaurus that are worth looking up.

On a more positive note, my friend Dolittle sent me a copy of Sarah Vowell's Assassination Vacation. It fits in perfectly with my Teddy Roosevelt obsession.

"Some days dance in the bracken"

Glen Uig

Believe in this couple this day who come
to picnic in the Faery Glen. They pay rain
no matter, or wind. They spread their picnic
under a gale-stunted rowan. Believe they grew tired
of giants and heroes and know they believe
in wise tiny creatures who live under the rocks.

Believe these odd mounds, the geologic joke
played by those wise tiny creatures far from
the world's pitiful demands: make money, stay sane.
Believe the couple, by now soaked to the skin,
sing their day as if dry, as if sheltered inside
Castle Ewen. Be glad Castle Ewen's only a rock
that looks like a castle. Be glad for no real king.

These wise tiny creatures, you'd better believe,
have lived through it all: the Viking occupation,
clan torturing clan, the Clearances, the World War
II bomber gone down, a fiery boom
on Beinn Edra. They saw it from here. They heard
the sobs of last century's crofters trail off below
where every day the Conon sets out determined for Uig.
They remember the Viking who wandered off course,
under the hazelnut tree hating aloud all he'd done.

Some days dance in the bracken. Some days go out
wide and warm on bad roads to collect the dispossessed
and offer them homes. Some days celebrate addicts
sweet in their dreams and hope to share with them
a personal spectrum. The loch here's only a pond,
the monster is in it small as a wren.

Believe the couple who have finished their picnic
and make wet love in the grass, the tiny wise creatures
cheering them on. Believe in milestones, the day
you left home forever and the cold open way
a world wouldn't let you come in. Believe you
and I are that couple. Believe you and I sing tiny
and wise and could if we had to eat stone and go on.

by Richard Hugo

I have been revisiting all the detective novels of James Crumley this week. Which always refers me back to Richard Hugo from whose poem the title of Crumley's The Last Good Kiss and this blog are taken from. A collected works is out , Making Certain It Goes On: The Collected Poems of Richard Hugo.

Nooooooooooooooooooooooo!

It's going to be a long season.

Iggy

Hopper

I have not been in the mood to post much of late. That attitude combined with a lack of regular internet access and a proclivity to procrastinate is not good for regular posting. So I figured it was at least time for some more cat pictures. Lately they have been a bit surly as their rations have been cut per doctors orders.

The holiday weekend was relaxing. I spent a portion of it down towards Kalona at a cookout. It was fun evening of good food (smoked salmon) and good music (local singer Dave Moore) which turned into an early morning of good company (friends that live near the cookout). Sunday afternoon I drove home and saw some Mennonite (or Amish) girls wearing their tell-tale bandannas and roller blading past the cheese factory. There was a blood orange sun setting in my rear view. I wished I had brought my camera. This was the best August weather wise we have had in Iowa since I moved here nine years ago.

It was recently my oldest nephew's 18th birthday and I thought I would do what all good relatives are supposed to do and that is post embarrassing photos. The above is a picture not long after he was born and featured in the center. My sister. Mom. Grandma, Dad and myself complete the rogues gallery.

This is a shot at Fenway in Boston when John was around 5 I think. This combined first baseball game with first train trip. He was sound asleep and complete dead weight however when I had to carry him back to South Station for the return trip to Connecticut.


I think this is not long after Christmas where in Thumper and My Little Buddy fought for attention. It's always good to keep these photos around.

"Up On Cripple Creek..."

Road trip back to Northeastern Iowa for second time this month....



Some fellow local reprobates and myself did a last minute kayaking trip in Bluffton

A nice pose down the next morning after we had recovered with a good nights sleep.

"It was a pleasure to burn..."

I enjoyed watching this film. It holds up well and I had no idea it existed. Nice touches by Truffaut and there is a making of documentary on the DVD worth viewing. This was Truffaut's first color film as well as his first in English. Good stuff. Also on the DVD is an interview with Ray Bradbury from 2002.

I also enjoyed the recent King Arthur with Clive Owen in the title role. A different take on the Arthur legends. This led me to my shelf to read about the Roman emperor Hadrian whose wall in northern Britain the main battle scenes of the movie take place near. Turns out he was one of the more stable emperors of that period following the fall of the republic. Granted this is in comparison to Augustus, Caligula, Nero, etc... Seems like a good film could be made just about Hadrian. It would not take much to better Oliver Stone's Alexander the Great crapfest of a few years back.

The Lower Chesapeake Bay

Whatever happened to the cross-chest carry,
the head carry, the hair carry,

the tired-swimmer-put-your-hands-on-my-shoulders-
and-look-in-my-eyes retrieval, and what

became of the stride jump when you leap
from impossible heights and land with your head

above water so that you never lose sight
of your drowning person, or if he is close enough

where is the lifesaver ring attached to a rope
you can hurl at your quarry then haul

him to safety, or as a last resort
where is the dock onto which you tug

the unconscious soul, place him face down,
clear his mouth, straddle his legs, and press

with your hands on both sides of his rib cage
to the rhythm of out goes the bad air in

comes the good air and pray he will breathe,
hallowed methods we practiced over and over

the summer I turned eighteen to win
my Water Safety Instructor's badge,

and where is the boy from Ephrata, Pa.,
I made out with night after night in the lee

of the rotting boathouse at a small dank camp
on the lower Chesapeake Bay?

Maxine Kumin

The Southern Review
Summer 2007

This poem is from is from the Daily Poetry archives. Have not been on the internet much this week but will make an effort to keep this up.

"Pink Rose, Green Bug"

Getting a little dusty around the old blog. I have been enjoying the Canadian television series "Slings and Arrows". I suppose its a drama but with more fun bits than serious and it does feature one of the former cast members from "The Kids in the Hall". It appears most of the episodes are on YouTube; here is the first clip. I was was fortunate that our local public library has all three seasons.

Off to the dentist this afternoon and am not looking forward to it as it has been slightly longer than the recommended six months between visits. Closer to a 108.

Living in America (not the James Brown version)

This is a pottery sculpture from a local artist I picked up a few years back from a silent charity auction. I added the feather duster headdress yesterday.

'Living in America,'
the intelligent people at Harvard say,
'is the price you pay for living in New England.'

Californians think
living in America is a reward
for managing not to live anywhere else.

The rest of the country?
Could it be sagging between two poles,
tastelessly decorated, dangerously overweight?

No. Look closely.
Under cover of light and noise
both shores are hurrying towards each other.

San Francisco
is already half way to Omaha.
Boston is nervously losing its way in Detroit.

Desperately the inhabitants
hope to be saved in the middle.
Pray to the mountains and deserts to keep them apart.

Anne Stevenson
Selected Poems
winner of the Neglected Masters Award

I meant to put this up a while back and it will have to stand as a belated 4th of July poem. The book is from the American Poets Project which I have mentioned previously here. I highly recommend the series.

High Tide in Tucson

Calexico on iLike - Get Sidebar

On a slightly more positive note, Calexico has released a trailer for the upcoming album. Did I mention they were playing for free in Chicago in September at a World Music Festival? I am sure I did.

Thomas Disch 1940-2008

How to Behave when Dead

A notorious tease, he may pretend
not to be aware of you.
Just wait.
He must speak first. Then
you may begin to praise him.

Remember:
sincerity and naturalness
count for more than wit.
His jokes may strike you as
abstruse.
Only laugh if he does.

Gifts?
They say he's mad for art,
but whether in the melting
elegiac mode of, say, this
Vase of Poppies
or, turning the mirror
to his own face, a bronze skull
gorging on a snake --
that is a matter of taste.
In any case, the expense
is what he notices.

What to wear.
Some authorities
still insist on black.
But really, in this modern age,
your best is all that is required.

-- Tom Disch


Thomas Disch, novelist, poet, critic, playwright, and children's book author, is dead. He took his own life after a series of tragedies. NY Times obit here.

For me, discovering Disch was world altering. He expanded my horizons and expectations. From the not just for kids book, The Brave Little Toaster to his book on poetry The Castle of Indolence, one of the few books of criticism I have read and enjoyed for pleasure, I have enjoyed his writing for years. He taught me more about how to read with a critical ear than anyone else. His book on science fiction, The Dreams Our Stuff is Made Of: How Science Fiction Conquered the World is a must read for all, even those who disdain the genre.

He will be missed. His blog is here.

"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like “I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive. . . .” And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming: “Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?”
Then it was quiet again. My attorney had taken his shirt off and was pouring beer on his chest, to facilitate the tanning process.
-- Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

More Summer Reading

Paul, our local expert from Prairie Lights bookstore, has turned me on to many books over the last several years and now he has gone global via the 'Tube. Enjoy and have a safe and pleasant holiday celebrating the birth of our country. Where is my Lee Greenwood record?

Cafe Tacuba

I went home for lunch and caught the end of these guys playing on Austin City Limits. Mexican Pop/Ska/Rock...I like it and they remind of Skatalites, Bosstones, etc...

"History ... is a nightmare from which I am trying to wake."

Thanks to Paper Cuts blog for pointing out the cover of the latest Poets & Writers magazine and the classic Marilyn photo. One of my goals for this summer's reading is to get through Richard Ellman's biography of James Joyce. I recently found a hard cover copy in excellent condition at Goodwill. I love the dark blue cover embossed Joyce's name and the Brancusi's symbol for Joyce on the fronts piece. I just need to find a good beach or a 'disappointed bridge' to sit and read on. And to somehow get paid for it.