Let's go sleeping in the film room
with the new-smelling all-surface
carpet. The lens is a life here, our life,
and it lends credence to dreams
with rapid focus, abrupt transitions,
strangely plausible events, keen for detail
of the otherwise (unfilmed) mundane.
A montage of the conscious to stir there
a larger collage of sleep. We won't even take
off our shoes. Life is not taking off
shoes, it shows how to frame grandly
and call it by name. Our heads
droop and dip forward as we go
under; pray, eat, travel, and work hard
in our dreams. There will be a train,
an allegory, a woman with a lovely
figure, smartly dressed. We sleep fast
and cold in these stone and plaster rooms.
—from "Sleeping with Muses" by Daniel Bouchard
*
The other night I dreamed that I found this beautiful little doll in an antique shop. She was about 6" high made of opal sandwich glass. She had on a lace dress covered wtih opal sandwich glass little beads... I also dreamed a few nights later of a pair of tiny silver high heels about the size of a little finger nail.... The best thing that I found on the trip back [from Great Spruce Head Island to Calais] was a little doll (white) in a little bottle.
—Joe Brainard qtd in Ron Padget's Joe: A Memoir of Joe Brainard, and of which no words of praise can come close to relating the magnificent power of delight this book offers. And insight to the sweet measures of life in art and poetry contained herein. Compelling, etc, a "must..."
*
Saturday Morning May 8th 1802. We sowed the Scarlet Beans in the orchard I read Henry 5th there—William lay on his back on the seat. 'Wept, For names, sounds paths delights and duties lost' taken from a poem upon Cowley's wish to retire to the Plantations—read in the Review I finished Derwent's frocks—after dinner William added a step to the orchard steps.
—Dorothy Wordsworth, from the Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth
*
And come home again,
empty of pocket,
but finger full.
Anti-quest,
the hero wants only
to throw these findings
into a saucepan, the truest
nature of treasure
is modesty. Cook
the golden fish
in a familiar pot.
All that is precious
being so portable
as to be weighed
on one side or the other.
from "Treasure Chest," Elizabeth Robinson
*
that was when we lived on a farm and cared for all the little chickens and their eggs that was when we were constructing a nest from stray branches broken debris and lint from our hair dryer the clothes washer was working just fine and we were living on an island that was when we were opening a coconut with a blade and I was wearing a skirt of dried weeds some with their flowers still at my knees you had one hand at your hip the other to your side
from "A love story," Andrea Baker
*
I dream of Oaxaca
And the lean and haggard vigil
Born of love
I don't break laws
I reject civilizations
—Charles Potts from "I Dream of Oaxaca"
[ Books ]
like wind loves a window Andrea Baker
Kiot Charles Potts
Some Mountains Removed Daniel Bouchard
Plots David Meiklejohn
Eureka Slough Joseph Massey
Political Cactus Poems Jonathan Skinner
[ Magz ]
The Poker 6 D. Bouchard, ed.
The Hat 6 Jordan Davis and Chris Edgar, eds.
26 Avery E.D. Burns, Rusty Morrison, Joseph Noble, Elizabeth Robinson, Brian Strang, eds.
Midnight 5 April 1805. I will write as truly as I can from Experience [—] actual individual Experience — not from Book-knowle[d]ge. But yet it is wonderful how exactly the Knowle[d]ge from good books coincides with the experience of men of the World, as I have often noticed when much younger / in men of the World who beginning to withdraw a little into themselves, commonly by reading — I have noticed in them their deep delight in so many passages which had escaped me — so much in so many others which I had never heard of but from Books / Experience necessary no doubt, if only to give a light and shade in the mind, to give to some ideas a greater vividness than others, & thereby to make it a thing of Time and outward reality — practical — for all being equally vivid = the whole becomes a dream. But notwithstanding this & other reasons, I yet believe that the saws against Book-knowle[d]ge are handed down to us from Times when Books conveyed only abstract Science or abstract Morality & Religion / whereas in the present day what is there of real Life, in all its goings on, Trades, Manufacturies, high Life, low life, animate & inanimate that is not in books. Books are conversation at present. Evil as well as Good in this, I well know / but Good too as well as Evil —
— from Coleridge's Notebooks: A Selection. Oxford 2002
*
What is a poet but a person
Who lives on the ground
Who laughs and listens
Without pretention of knowing
Anything, driven by the lyric's
Quest for rest that never
(God willing) will be found?
— "For Creeley" by Fanny Howe, from Foldemzine I. Pressed Wafer 2005
*
Gnosis is seeing
without acquisition.
*
the sail menders with hands
and feet repair into dawn
trailing bolts of canvas
maneuver fish needles in half light
reach top velocity in
pantheistic celebration
— from Emptied of All Ships. Stacy Szymaszek. Brooklyn: Litmus Press 2005
The poem is an oppurtunity to clarify your experience with the world. And in that clarifying proces, you become better equipped to deal with the places you inhabit.
*
My boy holding up fruit
and a book at my feet
sheaves of wheat in place of hair
And nursing on the other side now
comfortable next to crops
a child at my elbow
"No mystery was ever celebrated without dancing"
They went to the shore
and purified with sea-
water and probably
a sprinkling of pigs blood
The corn spirit
is a pig
A sow & her rows of milky teats
from "The Sun Person," Hoa Nguyen
*
At the entrance,
a plate of orange peels
dried in the Texas sun.
— from untitled poem by Kim Dorman
*
[ Books ]
Morning Gerald Coble / Texts by William Corbett
Emptied of All Ships Stacy Szymaszek
1 800*Flowers Robert Fitterman
Radios Ronald Johnson
without from within
[ MAGZ ]
Damn The Caesars Richard Owens, ed.
Stinkbug Barbiturates Jennifer Rogers & Michael Koshkin, eds.
*
And thanks to KD for his Gleanings, the inspiration behind this post....