Lomax recorded an enormous amount of folk music from all over the world. His library is in the process of being digitized so it will be available to the world for streaming online (!). Saw this in the wikipedia article about him and thought it was funny, regarding an FBI investigation into his alleged Communist views/sympathy:
Yet what the probe failed to find in terms of prosecutable evidence, it made up for in speculation about his character. An FBI report dated July 23, 1943, describes Lomax as possessing "an erratic, artistic temperament" and a "bohemian attitude." It says: "He has a tendency to neglect his work over a period of time and then just before a deadline he produces excellent results." The file quotes one informant who said that "Lomax was a very peculiar individual, that he seemed to be very absent-minded and that he paid practically no attention to his personal appearance." This same source adds that he suspected Lomax's peculiarity and poor grooming habits came from associating with the hillbillies who provided him with folk tunes".
On a side note, I wish I had his job.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Monday, January 30, 2012
"Birds Again" - Jim Harrison
A secret came a week ago though I already
knew it just beyond the bruised lips of consciousness.
The very alive souls of thirty-five hundred dead birds
are harbored in my body. It's not uncomfortable.
I'm only temporary habitat for these not-quite-
weightless creatures. I offered a wordless invitation
and now they're roosting within me, recalling
how I had watched them at night
in fall and spring passing across earth moons,
little clouds of black confetti, chattering and singing
on their way north or south. Now in my dreams
I see from the air the rumpled green and beige,
the watery face of the earth as if they're carrying
me rather than me carrying them. Next winter
I'll release them near the estuary west of Alvarado
and south of Veracruz. I can see them perching
on undiscovered Olmec heads. We'll say goodbye
and I'll return my dreams to earth.
-Jim Harrison
knew it just beyond the bruised lips of consciousness.
The very alive souls of thirty-five hundred dead birds
are harbored in my body. It's not uncomfortable.
I'm only temporary habitat for these not-quite-
weightless creatures. I offered a wordless invitation
and now they're roosting within me, recalling
how I had watched them at night
in fall and spring passing across earth moons,
little clouds of black confetti, chattering and singing
on their way north or south. Now in my dreams
I see from the air the rumpled green and beige,
the watery face of the earth as if they're carrying
me rather than me carrying them. Next winter
I'll release them near the estuary west of Alvarado
and south of Veracruz. I can see them perching
on undiscovered Olmec heads. We'll say goodbye
and I'll return my dreams to earth.
-Jim Harrison
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Anger
Moments when I am hunted
by the beast Anger,
I look over my shoulder gasping
at the patterns of his hide.
Some nights I have been walking
among streetlights hanging
vegetable from the trees.
I turn and see the dark shape
walking beside me.
So much more now,
so much clearer,
the thought creeps into the
glow of the lamp - he
is not subject to reason.
It will give him words.
I try to comfort myself with that,
still hurrying from circle to circle
of light and radial shadows.
It's not always so.
Some nights I stand drenched at the edge of the woods watching fireflies in a field mimicking outer space spinning myths in half-light.
by the beast Anger,
I look over my shoulder gasping
at the patterns of his hide.
Some nights I have been walking
among streetlights hanging
vegetable from the trees.
I turn and see the dark shape
walking beside me.
So much more now,
so much clearer,
the thought creeps into the
glow of the lamp - he
is not subject to reason.
It will give him words.
I try to comfort myself with that,
still hurrying from circle to circle
of light and radial shadows.
It's not always so.
Some nights I stand drenched at the edge of the woods watching fireflies in a field mimicking outer space spinning myths in half-light.
Humors
Where are the campfires?
People are like elements
fire water earth air
all made of life
giving rise to it
but too much of em
starts to fuck things up
People are like elements
fire water earth air
all made of life
giving rise to it
but too much of em
starts to fuck things up
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
"A Book of Music" - Jack Spicer
Coming at an end, two lovers
Are exhausted like two swimmers. Where
Did it end? there is no telling. No love is
Like an ocean with the dizzy procession of the waves' boundaries
From which two can emerge exhausted, or long goodbye
Like death.
Coming at an end. Rather, I would say, like a length
Of coiled rope
Which does not disguise in the final twists of its lengths
Its endings.
But, you will say, we loved
And some parts of us loved
And the rest of us will remain
Two persons. Yes,
Poetry ends like a rope.
-Jack Spicer
Are exhausted like two swimmers. Where
Did it end? there is no telling. No love is
Like an ocean with the dizzy procession of the waves' boundaries
From which two can emerge exhausted, or long goodbye
Like death.
Coming at an end. Rather, I would say, like a length
Of coiled rope
Which does not disguise in the final twists of its lengths
Its endings.
But, you will say, we loved
And some parts of us loved
And the rest of us will remain
Two persons. Yes,
Poetry ends like a rope.
-Jack Spicer
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Old Photos (Ike and I like each other)
Memories serve as entertainment, sometimes. Maybe sentiment is a better word than entertainment. I've spent time watching old home videos and looking through photo albums, as other people have, for entertainment...but what about when we look through others' photos? Others' memories (if that's what that is)?
My grandfather and step-grandmother on my dad's side (Grandpa and Grandma Linda, respectively) live in a colonial era house on the Chester River in Chestertown, MD. When we saw them for Christmas this year, we left with a box of mementos from my somewhat recently deceased great-grandmother, "Binnie."
(She died three years ago, at age 102. Her house is right across the street from Grandpa's in Chestertown. Some things people call "timeless" - I would call Binnie "timefull." She had a beautiful smile, as well as a manic little pug named Mac - she had many dogs in her life, but this one I knew - who had an impressive wardrobe complete with a matching raincoat and rain hat. He was a real licker.)
Most of the box's contents were old photographs. It's been fun picking out her and other remembered family members and friends in the pictures (though that's mainly the task of my father, as I don't recognize those people). They are both strange and familiar - do I imagine it to be so?
There was also a signed, framed picture of Dwight D. Eisenhower! An old friend of the USA, I guess you could say. Haven't dug into the background on that one yet. The picture is an intersection of familial and collective memory - a mandorla-like artifact. And now it is a piece of my personal memory.
My grandfather and step-grandmother on my dad's side (Grandpa and Grandma Linda, respectively) live in a colonial era house on the Chester River in Chestertown, MD. When we saw them for Christmas this year, we left with a box of mementos from my somewhat recently deceased great-grandmother, "Binnie."
(She died three years ago, at age 102. Her house is right across the street from Grandpa's in Chestertown. Some things people call "timeless" - I would call Binnie "timefull." She had a beautiful smile, as well as a manic little pug named Mac - she had many dogs in her life, but this one I knew - who had an impressive wardrobe complete with a matching raincoat and rain hat. He was a real licker.)
Most of the box's contents were old photographs. It's been fun picking out her and other remembered family members and friends in the pictures (though that's mainly the task of my father, as I don't recognize those people). They are both strange and familiar - do I imagine it to be so?
There was also a signed, framed picture of Dwight D. Eisenhower! An old friend of the USA, I guess you could say. Haven't dug into the background on that one yet. The picture is an intersection of familial and collective memory - a mandorla-like artifact. And now it is a piece of my personal memory.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Speak, Memory
One of the oldest poems in print is the Odyssey. Though often translated as "Sing, Muse," the first two words of the epic are perhaps more accurately translated as "Speak, Memory." At least that is what I gathered from a class discussion on Stanley Lombardo's translation, which uses "memory." The cover for his translation is an "earthrise" photo from one of the Apollo missions, a choice I quite liked. I like space in general, too, and most things to do with outer space.
Back then, of course, before the stuff was even written down, memory was the ultimate resource of the poet. In the time of oral traditions, the memory of the bard was the text of the poem. If you buy into body/soul dichotomies, you could say the poet's memory was the soul and the telling was the body. Each telling, like a human body, would have been unique in some way. Maybe some had six toes on their right foot. Maybe some were midgets. Maybe some were beautiful women - like the beautiful women we think we remember, but when we rack our brains for the length of her hair, the subtle curves of her jaw, the precise colors of her iris, we are left with the singular, empty sense that she was beautiful, and nothing else.
Back then, of course, before the stuff was even written down, memory was the ultimate resource of the poet. In the time of oral traditions, the memory of the bard was the text of the poem. If you buy into body/soul dichotomies, you could say the poet's memory was the soul and the telling was the body. Each telling, like a human body, would have been unique in some way. Maybe some had six toes on their right foot. Maybe some were midgets. Maybe some were beautiful women - like the beautiful women we think we remember, but when we rack our brains for the length of her hair, the subtle curves of her jaw, the precise colors of her iris, we are left with the singular, empty sense that she was beautiful, and nothing else.
"Eyes of Iblis" - Chris Moran
Spires of the sun pulsate and ache throughout the continuity of the void,
Through collapsed, weaning light. A limbic light whose fulminating aura is felt
Though never touched. I can never feel empathy for anything except for a failing thing.
Crossroads dim in this contingent vacuity. A devil touched me. Birthed me, brandished me.
Though my target eyes smile breath varnished. A tragic nudity, a stillborn. Palatial saturation.
Channels of decay. A fuming tension puts a barrier between my life-stream and other currents
Which flow parallel. The flow of days onward is a collapsible echo. Morph into an annihilated
Dream. The burning sensation of moon rain flitting the planet. To master our capacities
Fuller and fuller on command. To put my dream on this planet.
-Chris Moran
Through collapsed, weaning light. A limbic light whose fulminating aura is felt
Though never touched. I can never feel empathy for anything except for a failing thing.
Crossroads dim in this contingent vacuity. A devil touched me. Birthed me, brandished me.
Though my target eyes smile breath varnished. A tragic nudity, a stillborn. Palatial saturation.
Channels of decay. A fuming tension puts a barrier between my life-stream and other currents
Which flow parallel. The flow of days onward is a collapsible echo. Morph into an annihilated
Dream. The burning sensation of moon rain flitting the planet. To master our capacities
Fuller and fuller on command. To put my dream on this planet.
-Chris Moran
Monday, January 9, 2012
Beaverland
"Santorum thinks he’s a bold color and Romney’s a pastel. But the whole Republican field seems ensconced in a black-and-white ’50s diorama. It’s like they’re running for president of Leave It to Beaverland."
-Maureen Dowd, "The Grating Santorum," New York Times 1/7/12
-Maureen Dowd, "The Grating Santorum," New York Times 1/7/12
Friday, January 6, 2012
Wet Dream
Dreams will have rules as well-
I remember, in brackish river water
beholding the pale naked body
of my mysterious construction.
details as always are fading away
or perhaps were never there
perhaps their specifics were structured by desire
and so I saw them
only because that feeling made them
necessary
The water held her,
and I in orbit-
she the starry backdrop
in slow revolution
I too was a revolutionary,
Growing, always, at that age.
My boy you have grown,
whispered the part of me
that had always thought of itself
as an old man
Time has revealed the subject to me-
she too was holding her breath
I remember, in brackish river water
beholding the pale naked body
of my mysterious construction.
details as always are fading away
or perhaps were never there
perhaps their specifics were structured by desire
and so I saw them
only because that feeling made them
necessary
The water held her,
and I in orbit-
she the starry backdrop
in slow revolution
I too was a revolutionary,
Growing, always, at that age.
My boy you have grown,
whispered the part of me
that had always thought of itself
as an old man
Time has revealed the subject to me-
she too was holding her breath
"Psalm" - George Oppen
Veritas sequitur...
In the small beauty of the forest
The wild deer bedding down-
That they are there!
Their eyes
Effortless, the soft lips
Nuzzle and the alien small teeth
Tear at the grass
The roots of it
Dangle from their mouths
Scattering earth in the strange woods.
They who are there.
Their paths
Nibbled thru the fields, the leaves that shade them
Hang in the distances
Of sun
The small nouns
Crying faith
In this in which the wild deer
Startle, and stare out.
-George Oppen
In the small beauty of the forest
The wild deer bedding down-
That they are there!
Their eyes
Effortless, the soft lips
Nuzzle and the alien small teeth
Tear at the grass
The roots of it
Dangle from their mouths
Scattering earth in the strange woods.
They who are there.
Their paths
Nibbled thru the fields, the leaves that shade them
Hang in the distances
Of sun
The small nouns
Crying faith
In this in which the wild deer
Startle, and stare out.
-George Oppen
Sunday, January 1, 2012
"Man Carrying Thing" - Wallace Stevens
The poem must resist the intelligence
Almost successfully. Illustration:
A brune figure in winter evening resists
Identity. The thing he carries resists
The most necessitous sense. Accept them, then,
As secondary (parts not quite perceived
Of the obvious whole, uncertain particles
Of the certain solid, the primary free from doubt,
Things floating like the first hundred flakes of snow
Out of a storm we must endure all night,
Out of a storm of secondary things),
A horror of thoughts that suddenly are real.
We must endure our thoughts all night, until
The bright obvious stands motionless in cold.
-Wallace Stevens
Almost successfully. Illustration:
A brune figure in winter evening resists
Identity. The thing he carries resists
The most necessitous sense. Accept them, then,
As secondary (parts not quite perceived
Of the obvious whole, uncertain particles
Of the certain solid, the primary free from doubt,
Things floating like the first hundred flakes of snow
Out of a storm we must endure all night,
Out of a storm of secondary things),
A horror of thoughts that suddenly are real.
We must endure our thoughts all night, until
The bright obvious stands motionless in cold.
-Wallace Stevens
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