tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-78582298327234387112023-11-15T10:41:17.712-05:00"Across The River And Into The Trees".......... "Heart With No Companion""Coil Up Your Ropes and Anchor Here 'Till Better Weather Doth Appear"
bill shermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04168365468808561496noreply@blogger.comBlogger20125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7858229832723438711.post-31766223390307499962018-06-24T20:07:00.000-04:002018-06-24T20:07:14.376-04:00Robert Creeleyfrom <i>Loner</i><br />
<br />
Wants the dream back,<br />
Keeps walkingbill shermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04168365468808561496noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7858229832723438711.post-66033721029270332872018-06-16T16:34:00.001-04:002018-06-16T16:34:42.662-04:00J.P. DonleavyIn his last completed novel, <i>Wrong Information Is Being Given Out At Princeton, </i>he writes: "Somewhere not far from here Herman Melville was a customs inspector. And no one gave a hoot or cared."bill shermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04168365468808561496noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7858229832723438711.post-14525668809646678212017-08-04T15:01:00.001-04:002017-08-04T15:01:58.173-04:00Jim CarrollA tiny excerpt from the long poem "While She's Gone" by the late great Jim Carroll -----<br />
<br />
<br />
Conscience is no more than the dead speaking to us<br />
It's hard to find comfort<br />
In this world.<br />
<br />
You brought that to me<br />
That's hard to let go.bill shermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04168365468808561496noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7858229832723438711.post-16753752717263680312017-06-24T13:15:00.000-04:002017-06-24T13:28:21.818-04:00The Bird SkinnerThis post is in honor of my friend Michael Dougherty, who spent four years in the Pacific during WWII (Guadalcanal, Okinawa) and whom I visited in Waimanalo (Oahu, Hawaii) several times in my younger years. He was the author and the publisher of TO STEAL A KINGDOM - PROBING HAWAIIAN HISTORY, an important, even crucial, well-researched and heartfelt text which influenced the Sovereignty movement in the islands. A sometimes cantankerous old U.S. Marine, he also demonstrated in his life the significance of Dylan Thomas's "do not go gentle into that good night."<br />
<br />
<br />
Alice Greenway's powerful, and, in my opinion, deeply enduring novel, "The Bird Skinner" is not a book for anyone but the most serious readers of contmporary fiction; it is not an easy glossy read, but a difficult and disturbing tale structurally moving back and forth in time, and using, organically, not gratuituously, the life and work of Stevenson and Hemingway. After a brief Prologue, it opens with a quote from RLS's (Tusitala, as he was known in Samoa) "Treasure Island" - "Yet some of the men who had sailed with him before expressed their pity to see him so reduced." The figure of Long John Silver pervades the novel as does the protagonist's reseach into what might have been the actual location of the island. "It was just the sort of place Stevenson would soon set sail for himself. Taking his royalties from "Treasure Island" and his tubercular cough, the great writer would leave dour Edinburgh and bleak Britain for good. Sail to the South Seas, to the Gilberts, to Tahiti, and finally to Samoa, where he is buried....Jim finishes his drink and watches the sky light up across the cove. Stevenson dreamed it all before, Jim thinks. He sent Silver ahead to scout, to reconnoiter, to lead him in." <br />
<br />
"Lowering his foot, he stretches his toes against the rough, scratchy weave of the sun-bleached kilim rug. Catches an unwelcome glimpse of the stump in the bureau mirror. The ugly, blunt rounded shape of the thing. Its grotesque pink hue. Nestled against it, his uaroused penis curled in its nest of gray hair....Welcome to old age, the final decline. He's still got his mind, as far as he's aware. He's not sure in what order he'd like to lose his other faculties: eyesight, hearing, bladder. The inevitable slide. His set of toes looks lost, unmatched, unsymmetrical. His one thin leg unfit for the task of hopping."<br />
<br />
A dark novel, rooted in the Solomon Islands, and exploring how guilt and regret pervade the present. <br />
<br />
bill shermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04168365468808561496noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7858229832723438711.post-74261791099118671242017-04-03T16:21:00.003-04:002017-04-03T16:35:41.436-04:00Jeremy Hilton, a new poemtransfigured<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
lovers wreathed like mists<br />
in a star-sharp night<br />
speak of a lost togetherness<br />
amid the surfeit of separation<br />
the strobes of chaos thrown<br />
from tower-blocks like long ghost shadows<br />
in these last human years<br />
of homeless doorways and diesel air<br />
<br />
they will shine beyond<br />
the world they vanish from<br />
until the night cries back<br />
for want of their warmth and whispers<br />
<br />
and once they've flown<br />
past all the orbits of satellites and moons<br />
we will find they left behind them<br />
a dance of fireflies over the frosted town<br />
<br />
<br />
(after Arnold Schoenberg and Niall Wilson)<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
---Jeremy Hilton, one of Britian's most senior poets, has published 12 collections of poetry, and for over 15 years he edited and published the journal FIRE, some issues of which are online @www.poetrymagazines.org.uk. bill shermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04168365468808561496noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7858229832723438711.post-65020608870412745512017-01-28T09:13:00.000-05:002017-03-11T09:20:38.498-05:00Tom Raworth, an early poemOn January 23, 2017, Tom posted the following on his blogsite: "Parts of it have been fun and it's been a decent run."<br />
<br />
This short poem was the opening text to his exceptional little book, LION LION, (published in 1970 by Asa Benveniste's Trigram Press).<br />
<br />
<br />
the happy hunters are coming back<br />
eager to be captured, to have someone unravel the knot<br />
but nobody can understand the writing<br />
in the book they found in the lions' lair<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
(Tom Raworth, 1938 - 2017) bill shermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04168365468808561496noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7858229832723438711.post-52810400365958056262016-03-31T12:34:00.002-04:002016-03-31T14:41:30.186-04:00Letter from Robert CreeleyThis letter from Robert Creeley was rejected from inclusion in his Selected Letters. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
64 Amherst Street <br />
Buffalo, NY 14207-2748<br />
(Presently San Diego)<br />
<br />
March 30, 1994<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Dear Bill,<br />
<br />
We've managed to get ourselves to edge of charmingly vast Pacific, and if wishes were wings, we'd head for Moorea this very moment. Ah well! I love poem of Phil Whalen's that has line: "Let's call it the Pacific." One of the few "lines" I've remembered ever after (along with "Little Orphan Annie came to our house to play" and "The road was a ribbon of moonlight." etc. etc.) So San Diego is hardly where you are at (or so I imagine) but it is a great relief for this brief week after the characteristic hanging on winter of Buffalo. So good to be somewhere where one isn't endlessly having to think of inside and outside "edges".<br />
<br />
I don't know finally what to think of Cid's quite evidently flat finances. As Puritan I would mumble he "wanted it that way" but that's not true. His ventures, as the restaurant in Boston, or the teahouse scene there in Kyoto don't make it apparently, despite his wife's incredible labors and devotion. Anyhow I just don't know finally. But I do know he committed all his attention to his imagination of poetry years ago and that's been the point of it all, good or bad. I don't therefore have to feel guilty. All in all, he's had remarkable response, given he all but rejected it so often. You'll sense, like they say, that there's an aspect of Cid's scene that both drives me up the wall and down into doldrums--worried I don't deserve etc. etc. But no one deserves nothing, if that's the question--figure Cid's where he figured to be, and Japan is <i>not</i> next door to 51 Jones Avenue, Dorchester, Mass. So be it, as the Zen Buddhists say. Onward!<br />
<br />
All best as ever,<br />
Bob<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />bill shermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04168365468808561496noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7858229832723438711.post-10065610516475521612016-01-30T17:50:00.000-05:002016-02-10T15:27:49.115-05:00Letter to Teuruna<i>Mauruuru</i> for your card, and for thinking of me, remembering me. I always have kept a suitcase packed and am still ready to return to Moorea.<br />
<br />
There is so much to say, yet words cannot express it properly. I do remember everything and everybody. I know it was not all milk and honey for people there and I know how privileged I was to be there so many times, and to experience the magic<br />
<br />
I hope you and Marc are well. And your younger sister, Sidonie. You were my "lagoon guru" of course, and it was so wonderful on the <i>motu - </i>the picnics, the <i>pakelolo</i>, the grilled <i>Maohi</i> corned beef. The Saturday night show and barbeque; and the Sunday feast: <i>uru, fafa, poi</i>. The lovely dinners of lamb and<i> taro</i> you cooked in your<i> fare</i>....<br />
<br />
So many have died. Paul, to whom you were so kind. My friend Michel (yes, I know he was raving drunk so often, but a great artist) - we had deep discussions about art and poetry even though his English was as bad as my French! Teva, who died so young. Andre. Ben. Monsieur Gendron. Didier. ..... I still have a carved coconut and black beads from the Marquesas Paul gave me.<br />
<br />
Remember when you and Caroline took me to where Roonui was living in a little <i>fare</i> and he thought I was <i>completement fou</i> for wanting a tatoo the traditional way until you convinced him I was okay. Jewish people are not supposed to have a tatoo, and the very day I got one my house I then owned in Feltonville in Philadelphia was burgled. Very strange! (I hope Caroline is okay, and that she has forgiven me for being insensitive to her when she was planning on visiting me in New Jersey.)<br />
<br />
Well, there's always more...I remember William (the gardener) often having a smoke with me on the porch of my bungalow before he began work. And Dahlia. And Julienne. And Christina (Logue), but that's another story...<br />
<br />
It does get lonely here on my own in London, but I am 75 now - ancient! Lucky to be alive. As you must know, I daydream of going back to Moorea one more time. Still ready to snorkel in the lagoon! <br />
<br />
I remember when Marc surfaced there after his service underwater in a nuclear submarine - he must have thought he died and went to heaven! <br />
<br />
And I think of all the others in that extraordinary community of Moorea (and Tahiti) - Donny, Jacques, Ron, Lee and Paola, Jean, Omaha Pat, Tea, and everyone else who made my life in Polynesia the happiest of times. <br />
<br />
Be healthy and strong. Blessings to you. <i>Faaitoito. </i><br />
<br />
Bill (<i>Mahi).</i> <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />bill shermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04168365468808561496noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7858229832723438711.post-9681564385596248582015-10-28T15:27:00.000-04:002016-03-31T20:46:27.205-04:00ALONE IN LISBON AGAINSo much of my life now spent<br />
& I see<br />
the great Portuguese poets<br />
of the past 100 years & more<br />
all dying young<br />
Pessoa, Cesario, Florbela<br />
<br />
Should I be grateful for old age?<br />
<br />
Everyone who loved me<br />
- said they loved me<br />
though if it were true<br />
it was only in the moment -<br />
They are all gone now, died<br />
or with others<br />
or disappeared from my life<br />
<br />
Did this begin to happen<br />
When, (without knowing it!)<br />
My Faith left me<br />
-or I abandoned it ....<br />
<br />
Sometimes<br />
the loneliness<br />
is overpowering<br />
<br />
I rent a flat in London<br />
but don't like living there<br />
cold climate, so many people, <br />
a filthy city<br />
few poets ever celebrated<br />
except to wade<br />
in praise of its darknesses<br />
and lack of <i>joie de vivre</i><br />
<br />
And in America?<br />
What is left there for me<br />
Save further depression<br />
<br />
Every day<br />
Death on my mind<br />
<br />
Well, a little holiday<br />
in a pricey hotel<br />
-seeing a few things here again-<br />
after almost 15 years<br />
dinners and a bit of time<br />
with Anabela<br />
<br />
<br />
damn this self-pity<br />
& the nightmare el cheapo flight<br />
back tomorrow<br />
the crush at Immigration<br />
the coach or train after<br />
travelling by myself<br />
after the heart attacks<br />
the strangulated hernia<br />
the deafness & tinnitus<br />
old man shut up<br />
your time is almost finished !<br />
where is God?<br />
I am obviously not Job<br />
Everywhere here still<br />
The Temptations of Saint Anthony! <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />bill shermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04168365468808561496noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7858229832723438711.post-27221341873115072752015-10-26T14:39:00.002-04:002016-01-26T07:30:11.617-05:00Homage To Cesario Verde"....He was a simple compadre<br />
who walked around the city as if lost in his own freedom"<br />
<br />
-----Alberto Caeiro.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
He loved a woman named Clarice<br />
And lost her, and then his demise in 1886<br />
Tubercular and gone at 31,<br />
His brother and his sister<br />
Also having succumbed<br />
To the shadowy plague<br />
Haunting the twilight streets of Lisboa<br />
<br />
Disregarded in life<br />
His friend Silva Pinto<br />
Gathered up his poetry which Pessoa read<br />
"Until my eyes began to bleed."<br />
<br />
This great poet of love and melancholy<br />
Who would not tie the knot in church<br />
"La Nessa E Que Nao Caio!"<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
II<br />
<br />
I saw a man in the streets of Saldanha<br />
<br />
It might have been a woman -<br />
Hard to tell, except from his girth and stride<br />
Wrapped several times over<br />
And on his head and feet<br />
In layers of waterproof plastic <br />
Black and thin<br />
Completely covering him<br />
Without even a visible carrying bag<br />
Twice in several days I saw him<br />
Not even begging, only slowly<br />
Moving amidst the affluence of the square.<br />
Catching his eye the second time<br />
(Perhaps I was looking to give him a few Euro)<br />
He turned quickly away<br />
With such a hard jerk<br />
That I thought he had somehow recognized me<br />
<br />
From a time long gone,<br />
Distant, when his fortunes<br />
Still stretched out before him<br />
I caught the pain in his eyes<br />
as he yanked his face away<br />
& kept on walking<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
III<br />
<br />
(The Remembered Joy) <br />
<br />
Ocean of Margate, New Jersey<br />
feeling the salt water immersing the body<br />
as you dive under a wave<br />
or ride one in to shore<br />
the oft-derided New Jersey shore<br />
despoiled some now<br />
by the greed of those<br />
who porkbarreled to build the artificial dunes<br />
where the people don't want them<br />
changing the sand quality<br />
protecting nothing the bulkheads cannot (*) <br />
<br />
or of snorkeling<br />
out by the reef<br />
in a far away place I loved <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
IV<br />
<br />
There is no charm in London<br />
Not one poet who has resided here<br />
Has written of enchantment<br />
(Allen Fisher's <i>Place</i> comes closest) <br />
Only its plagues and poverty<br />
The dull grey cold and the chill<br />
What a relief it would be<br />
To leave this fouled "city of dreadful night"<br />
Its cultural hype and celebrity wealth<br />
The knives and gangs the literati seem to revel in!<br />
"It's <i>my</i> sewer" poets here say.<br />
"Piss off" people say to me on the street, we<br />
Don't want you here.<br />
Beggars and rough sleepers and "po-faced" shave-headed youth.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
V<br />
<br />
Cesario channels Camoes<br />
holding aloft his manuscript <i>Os Lusiadas</i><br />
<br />
as he swims to shore after the shipwreck near Cambodia <br />
and the death of she whom he loved<i> </i><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
(*)<i> The "dune project" - building artificial dunes on the beach, interfering with nature, lining the pockets of local and state officials, and the army core of engineers, was voted down in Margate, twice; yet, the bullying right-wing governor continues to viciously excoriate the people of Margate - one of only two barrier island towns to refuse the project. In recent storms, "sandy" and "jonas", flooding was bayside not beachside, and bulkheads protect from ocean's rages, but the megabuck corruption of the governor's obsession to line all New Jersey coastal towns with man-made dunes rather than to repair and raise the bulkheads continues. </i>(Footnote added January 26th.) bill shermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04168365468808561496noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7858229832723438711.post-1368325226920138382015-09-21T17:45:00.000-04:002019-08-13T15:10:04.506-04:00Ketan Ben CaesarKetan Ben Caesar has died. (News of his passing came to me here in London, England, via Mbali Umoja's facebook post and group photo with Ketan on her site.)<br />
<br />
For 40 years he organized poetry readings in Philadelphia, more by far than any other poet in the history of my old home town, and in a great variety of Goodisville places like McGlinchey's, Bacchanal (with Chris Peditto), and Fairmount's London pub.<br />
<br />
Ketan was a highly spiritual man, beloved and respected by many (although not by the pseudo-avant-garde academics and their circle at the U. of Pennsylvania who never would have dreamed of offering a street-poet like him a reading at their claustrophobic venues). This despite the fact that, in my opinion, his <b>Black Hand</b> was the finest (even the most frightening and profound) and wildest performance poem-piece I have ever heard!<br />
<br />
Like Bunting, Ketan believed that the human voice was the instrument which brought the score, the notes and rhythms of the poem, to life, and he consistently (even obstinately) refused hard-copy publication, so deep and even courageous his belief in the oral tradition. <br />
<br />
He was a physical man with a powerful ego, but a kind-hearted and sensitive person behind the sometimes gruff exterior of his Tuscan birth and South Philly upbringing. <br />
<br />
I had the pleasure of doing an Afterword to his eccentric long reading in Ocean City, New Jersey, in 2011, to commemorate Human Rights Day, sponsored by Amnesty International. It was clear when I collected him at the Atlantic City train station, that he was in pain from his arthritis, but he carried on without complaint nevertheless, and his humanity was such that he secretly donated his $100 reading fee to Amnesty, saying to Georgina Shanley, head of South Jersey Amnesty, that he had lost the cheque and just to forget about replacing it. <br />
<br />
Ben Caesar's strong and passionate voice is one I dearly miss tonight. He was a good and true friend, and he dedicated his life to poetry. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />bill shermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04168365468808561496noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7858229832723438711.post-45608025393841019012015-08-05T12:06:00.002-04:002015-08-07T14:39:07.593-04:00Dave EtterIt was only a week ago that one of Britain's very best poets, Lee Harwood, departed from this world.... Today I received the news that my "favorite" American poet, Dave Etter, died just the other day. I wrote a brief review of his last book, a chapbook, actually, "Blue Rain" on Amazon, noting that although Dave was now in his mid-eighties, there was no loss of power. He was neither "experimental" nor "avant" and had said: "I'm a regionalist. How arrogant it would be to think of myself as national or international....You tell me how it goes in New Hampshire or Tennessee and I will tell you how it goes in Illinois. After all, William Carlos Williams, that superb regionalist, spoke the truth when he said 'The local is the universal'." <br />
<br />
Etter was perhaps the last great "populist" poet - a tradition now either overlooked, derided or denigrated in academia. His work was rooted in the landscape of the American midwest, where he lived most of his life, and he did what to me was quite improbable: making the disappearing small-town semi-rural life there appealing and Romantic. His work was deeply empathic, compassionate, and exhibited an exceptional humanity and a feeling for others, and love of life. The ironies were always organic and light, and when he delved into the political, his words had weight and tone. He agreed with Archibald MacLeish that "placeless poetry, existing in the non-geography of ideas, is a modern invention and not a very fortunate one."<br />
<br />
In his large early masterwork, <i>Alliance, Illinois</i>, he stands "Spoon River" on its head, giving voice to the living. Here is "Marcus Millsap" speaking in "School Day Afternoon":<br />
<br />
I climb the steps of the yellow school bus,<br />
move to a seat in back, and we're off,<br />
bouncing along the bumpy blacktop.<br />
What am I going to do when I get home?<br />
I'm going to make myself a sugar sandwich<br />
and go outdoors and look at the birds<br />
and the gigantic blue silo<br />
they put up across the road at Motts'.<br />
This weekend we're going to the farm show.<br />
I like roosters and pigs, but farming's no fun.<br />
When I get old enough to do something big,<br />
I'd like to grow orange trees in a greenhouse.<br />
Or maybe I'll drive a school bus<br />
and yell at the kids when I feel mad:<br />
"Shut up back there, you hear me?"<br />
At last, my house, and I grab my science book<br />
and hurry down the steps and into the sun.<br />
There's Mr. Mott, staring at his tractor.<br />
He's wearing his DeKalb cap<br />
with the crazy winged ear of corn on it.<br />
He wouldn't wave over here to me<br />
If I was handing out hundred dollar bills.<br />
I'll put brown sugar on my bread this time,<br />
then go lie around by the water pump,<br />
where the grass is very green and soft,<br />
soft as the body of a red-winged blackbird.<br />
Imagine, a blue silo to stare at,<br />
and Mother not coming home till dark!<br />
<br />
In a late-life letter to me on Keats and other matters: "Damn, the man died way too soon....It would be nice if we could meet. I hope so. Keep on going Bill."<br />
<br />
Alas, I was (and am) in London and never did get to Lanark, Illinois to sit on the "Front Porch Swing":<br />
<br />
And maybe <br />
close neighbors<br />
with cold beer<br />
and a banjo<br />
will walk up<br />
under the drooping<br />
sycamore leaves,<br />
mosquitoes<br />
stabbing<br />
their sweaty<br />
arms and necks,<br />
and we will sing and swing<br />
way beyond<br />
the ten o'clock<br />
news of the world,<br />
and who cares<br />
if the rusty<br />
chains creak?<br />
<br />
<br />
(Dave Etter was the author of 32 books of poetry. For further information about him see poet Carrie Etter's post (also on 5 August), @ carrieetter.blogspot.co.uk.) <br />
<br />
bill shermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04168365468808561496noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7858229832723438711.post-57467428603554005392015-06-28T09:20:00.000-04:002015-06-28T10:07:01.458-04:00David GitinA gentle American poet, under-regarded except by some other poets (Anne Waldman and Lyn Hejinian published blurbs for David's newist book, <i>Woke Up This Morning</i>, a selected poems 1962-2014), died just yesterday.<br />
<br />
His wife, Gloria Avner, posted for him on Facebook.<br />
<br />
A mate from Buffalo days, here is his poem "Blessing" from that fine book of his. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
waters run gold with black silt<br />
volcanic<br />
<br />
yellow moon yellow moon<br />
no matter the road<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
And from that same book:<br />
<br />
<b>Yer Blues</b><br />
<br />
words<br />
bound of dread<br />
<br />
birth<br />
not right<br />
<br />
world<br />
I did not do<br />
<br />
not know<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Horse Ankles </b><br />
<br />
horse ankles<br />
deer thighs<br />
<br />
they say I have my mother's<br />
eyes <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>The Sway of "A"</b><br />
<br />
a life<br />
alive all<b> </b> <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
R.I.P., man....bill shermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04168365468808561496noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7858229832723438711.post-84488540441196261572015-05-04T09:30:00.001-04:002015-07-21T08:37:41.486-04:00MayPacSunday, May 3, London. - Monday May 4th.. Thinking of the people of Nepal - a poor but proud mountain people, and waiting to watch a rerun of the "big fight" which I saw last night "live" on TV ($35 to see in UK, and reruns allowed for 24 hours).<br />
<br />
Never saw either before except Pacquiao being flat out cold on his face against Juan Marquez (a fighter Mayweather had defeated, but there was no rematch). I assumed Mayweather would win unless Pacquiao knocked him out. As has been said, he would have had to at least knock him down. He no longer had the punch to do it, although he rocked him once or twice, and Mayweather said after the fight that he was "a good puncher." But I was not impressed with either. Am just a lifetime fan of the sport, that's all, by no means an afficionado - "Greatest Fights of the Century" on black-and-white TV (10 p.m. east coast time saturdays was it..) when I was growing up sort of thing.... <br />
<br />
The fight might have ended the same way even if both were in their primes as boxers. (Paul Simon's song "The Boxer" comes to mind but one hopes that never happens, although I always relate that song to Joe Frazier, a good man, and the ferocity Smokin' Joe had in the first Ali fight, persistent and enduring, with the punch to back it up, would have been necessary for Pacquiao to break down Mayweather.)<br />
<br />
I don't follow the sport much anymore. I had never even heard of Pacquiao until De La Hoya, but I think his after-fight comment that Mayweather "didn't do anything" for him wasn't inaccurate, and personally, though Mayweather won, I thought it wasn't as clear-cut as the Judges and most others would have it/are having it. Pacquiao was the aggressor, made the fight, but it was clear he wouldn't knock him out, and Mayweather was ready with his right as Pacquiao must have remembered Marquez was. Then there was that shoulder injury as he claimed. Since it became unlikely a knockdown of Mayweather was to be, it also became clear that Mayweather was bigger and stronger and had significant reach advantage although the left seemed to serve simply to keep Pacquiao out, and to measure. <br />
<br />
I heard that Willie Pep once won a round without ever throwing a punch, and Mayweather's own claim that he was as good as Sugar Ray Robinson (or even Sugar Ray Leonard), is a bridge too far. Ali was faster as a young heavyweight than either of these it seemed, watching on TV or on the big screen in Buffalo the night he fought Cleveland Williams, whoa, - Ali's speed of hands not just feet, was unbelievable to see. The hard straight left jab that got through the defense, etc. <br />
<br />
But it was a good clean fight! Though Mayweather (on second viewing) did seem to wrestle a bit besides ducking and dodging. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Well, never mind about all of that, all of this. (and thanks to Allen Fisher, for publishing my previous short essay on a boxing match, "Frazier-Ali" - in SPANNER (number 6), and in the first SPANUAL anthology. (For the best long and serious essays on boxing, there is Hazlitt's classic, "The Fight" and in a more modern era, Norman Mailer's pieces. ) <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
("Same Day, Later")<br />
<br />
My father died in 1984 and left me enough money to leave my dead-end part-time job as an Adjunct teaching Composition at Temple U. (a job I had held for 18 months to pay the rent, and for which I had been glad to have, returning to Philadelphia after a hard decade in London, much of it south of the river), and to travel for a time, so I collected myself, and was able, after two years, to journey to India via a stopover in London, and a pre-booked flight to Nepal from - where was it, from Calcutta or Varanasi.... <br />
<br />
After five days and nights in Kathmandu, I departed....I wrote this poem during my time there. (It was published in 1988 by John Rety (Hearing Eye) as part of my chapbook "Glimpses of India and Nepal"). <br />
<br />
The allusion to "Rapunzel" is to the Kumari Devi.<br />
<br />
There was the murder of King Birendra and his family by one of their own, and the attempted armed takeover by the latest version of Maoists and God knows what else, and the everyday life of the people, and now the earthquake. "Namaste" is a Nepali word which I was told translates literally as "I salute all divine qualities in thee" and is a greeting, like Shalom, or Iaorana. Perhaps the "20 years" should have been 20 eons. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
NAMASTE<br />
<br />
for over twenty years & still<br />
the restless yearning lonely souls<br />
have come togther<br />
on the streets of Kathmandu<br />
<br />
King Birendra's in his Palace<br />
But there are beggars on the street<br />
White Lighnin's at the Red Square<br />
Steaks are at KC's<br />
Rapunzel's in the Durbar Square<br />
rarely to be seen.<br />
There are curries at Sunkosi<br />
Tibet is not yet free.<br />
<br />
And all the restless yearning souls of planet earth<br />
Will come together one last time<br />
In the Hindu Buddhist heart of Asia<br />
in the streets of Kathmandu<br />
<br />
And the children they go barefoot<br />
In the Himalayan foothills<br />
The women work like horses<br />
In the mountains of Nepal.<br />
The poor man always struggles.<br />
His house is cold in winter<br />
While the rulers live like Maharajahs.<br />
But holy men are chanting<br />
In the dusty night-time streets of Thamel<br />
Electric bodies turn the prayer wheels<br />
In Kantipur<br />
<br />
And all the restless yearning souls<br />
Will come together one more time<br />
In the Hindu Buddhist heart of Asia<br />
- the streets of Kathmandubill shermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04168365468808561496noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7858229832723438711.post-39547824123659747872015-04-26T18:17:00.001-04:002015-05-30T20:36:36.895-04:003 new poems 3 short new poems written in London this year and a photograph of how I look now at age 74 (2015) on the site of Prague Writers Festival (www.pwf.cz), in the subsection "Fear"....<br />
<br />
These poems complement (sort of) the 2 poems on the same site in "Cafe Central" from February 2009, and a photo from younger/happier/more hopeful times.<br />
<br />
Thanks to the President of Prague Writers Festival, American poet Michael March, for continuing to publish my work - if one can call it "work"....<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
earlier poems on-line in sites other than my six related blogsites can be accessed via www.poetrymagazines.org.uk.<br />
<br />
(1) Poetry Review, numbers 3 and 4 (1976/77). <br />
<br />
(2) Fire, numbers 9, 11, 12, 17, 26, and a guest editorial in #8.<br />
<br />bill shermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04168365468808561496noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7858229832723438711.post-78896743134542808802015-03-08T14:50:00.005-04:002015-03-11T15:00:20.268-04:00on expatriation"A day comes when these old people grow ill and helpless, far from the familiar sights and sounds of their youth, self-exiled for reasons which have become dim in their memories, in an alien place which they never saw as it is and quite understood...."<br />
<br />
(Luigi Barzini)<br />
<br />
(quoted by John Cohassey in his book "Hemingway and Pound") bill shermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04168365468808561496noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7858229832723438711.post-41558541836949970112015-01-22T20:30:00.001-05:002015-01-29T16:47:53.131-05:00Response to an e-mail from Pat Bohnet in Niagara Falls, NYWho asked me (referring to the very brief excerpt from "The Later Letters of Charles Olson and Frances Boldereff" I had posted on New Year's Eve) why Olson was so desperate, and also asking (referring to the previous post): Why is "Moby Dick" so important. What follows is my edited response to her queries.<br />
<br />
Olson imagined Frances Boldereff to be the great love of his life (though in my opinion, if they had gotten together for more than the very occasional fling it may not have worked (she wanted it to at first, but he wouldn't leave his wife). Olson was quite lonely the last years of his life after his second wife (both common law marriages) died in a car accident outside of Wyoming, N.Y. (about 40 miles from Buffalo) where they were living. Some think it was suicide, but there is no evidence of that. He was fortunate enough to have one child from each of the marriages, but after the death of Betty, his second wife, he was not able to look after them and they went to live with relatives. He was never "himself" so to speak after 1965, and pretty much lived alone in his apartment at Stage Fort in Gloucester, Massachusetts, a working-class district of that city. 2 volumes of letters to Frances, the 1st volume embarrassing and does his reputation no good at all - just sentimental wallowing, but the later letters are much better, when he realized they were never going to get together (though she was a bit of a tease). But simply he was very lonely. "Charles Olson in Connecticut" by the late scholar Charles Boer, deals with some of Olson's compulsive behavior during a few of these latter years.<br />
<br />
re: Melville. Although Moby Dick can be boring and hard slog, it is more a work of philosphy and cosmology than it is a novel, really. I recommend you buy Olson's "Call Me Ishmael" and only read Moby Dick when you have the psychological time and space, preferably on or looking at an ocean, though Niagara Falls will do nicely. I'm sure you have read Billy Budd. It is worth reading the best exegesis I know on Budd, a chapter in Andrew Del Banco's biography of Melville, which you can get at your library. An excellent good read, but he skims over much too lightly Melville's quite formative years in the South Seas.<br />
<br />
There is what I think is a major vision change in his writing after Moby Dick to a very dark pessimsim after he realized (as I too have realized in my own life - though I am not in any way comparing myself except in this respect) he would never be able to return to the South Seas. In fact his wife wanted to commit him to an insane asylum and went so far as to ask Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., to sign the commitment papers. Melville took off for the Middle East ("The Holy Land" as he put it) and except for Budd, wrote only poetry the last decades of his life. In Moby Dick, the only Polynesian character is Queequeg, whereas in his first three books, Typee, Omoo (set mainly on Moorea then called Aimeo), and Mardi, there is Polynesian Romance to the nth degree. <br />
<br />
I would put Moby Dick favorably up against any other text, the Russian novelists, Marquez, even Shakespeare. Melville was the greatest writer America has produced, and Moby Dick is his masterwork. bill shermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04168365468808561496noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7858229832723438711.post-2948321538735713132015-01-10T20:36:00.000-05:002015-01-20T23:08:43.106-05:00John le CarreBecause of the cloak-and-dagger nature of his subject matter, his novels do not receive the praise of tastemakers and academics; however, his books investigate moral ambiguity in all of its deepest aspects. The protagonists, some of whom, like Melville's Bulkington, begin by being good men, and naive men, in a world of shadows. Melville disappears him from the Pequod and Moby Dick early on; le Carre makes him someone whose illusions are stripped bare, so that he cannot even utter "The horror!" as Conrad's Marlowe does since he is not looking into the abyss but is inside of it. Nations as entities, imperialist entities, and men seeking power within these structures, cause chaos, downfall, and death. His language is so precise in his novels that the noir-ness impales the reader in a web of conflict, a spider's web of confusion for the characters in his novels who are pawns, wittingly and unwittingly, willingly and unwillingly, for the forces which control the world and our lives in it.<br />
<br />
His protagonists, like the haunted characters in the novels of David Goodis, for example, commit, in the end, to honorable action and even to love, but it destroys them. Right from the beginning, from his first novel, Call For The Dead, le Carre is certain of his direction, and the character of George Smiley is introduced, and the figure of Mundt, who features prominently in his taut masterpiece, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. A friend had told me this novel was even better than the film, which I found hard to believe, but it is true. The characters played in the film by Richard Burton and Claire Bloom are portrayed in the novel in a way which make their transformations doomed, and, in the end Alex Leamas, counter-intelligence agent, opts for a humanity, despite the plea of Smiley, the head of "the circus" - MI5, and MI6, the British domestic and foreign spy networks, so called because the headquarters are in Cambridge Circus, a street near London's West End. But this is no James Bond world; it is a black-and-white nightmare, where nothing is clear, only grey, where goodness is betrayed in the name of national security. <br />
<br />
Smiley suffers personal betrayal in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, the le Carre tale adapted into the extraordinary TV series with Alec Guiness as Smiley, and in Smiley's People as well, for which LeCarre wrote the screenplay. (Both these brilliant and engrossing TV program series feature Beryl Reid as "Connie" the Sovietologist who first brought the double agent activities of the "Cambridge five" to light, and who was the first to name Philby as a traitor.) Smiley's deep analytic intelligence and careful commitments allow him to rise above his masters and contemporaries, even if his coldness, his calculating nature and investigative mind and cynical disposition deprive him of his emotions due to love lost (in spite of his maintained loyalty to his country). <br />
<br />
Absolute Friends is an exceptionally ambitious novel attempting a kind of overview of what the world is really like when all illusions are shattered. It is a novel reminiscent of Fitzgerald in its precience - the knowledge that the wealthy phillistines have emerged victorious and have left a waste land behind them. Published in 2003, one of the two protagonists, Sacha, le Carre names him, was also the code nickname of Litvinenko, the secret agent who was the first victim of private nuclear terrorism, murdered in London via the ingestion of Polonium 210, in 2006. An odd literary co-incidence or even a literary misprision (as Harold Bloom might say), but the world created by le Carre, seemingly old fashioned cold war and post cold war, is almost Burroughsian under the surface - a world where, as Burroughs had said (first to Eric Mottram): "A paranoid is a man in possession of all of the facts." A world where Dr. Benway calls the shots. A world where politics is for the naive, where people and nations are no longer in control of their destinies, where "no good deed goes unpunished" (Wilde), and where loyalty and friendship and family are consistently undermined, where the male bonding, a kind of Greek agape, between Sacha and the British recruit to the Secret Services, Ted Mundy, must be destroyed, inevitably. le Carre, despite his distaste for what Britain has become, a nation steeped in secret hypocrisy, reserves his greatest disdain for the CIA, picturing the shoot first ask questions later attitude of the American empire, as the most extreme form of coarse anti-intellectualism which the author despises, yet never denying its effectivness in the struggle to maintain a kind of "freedom" against overtly dictatorial regimes, and their servants, represented more often than not by the governments behind the old iron curtain.<br />
<br />
le Carre was employed as a spy for a time by British intelligence, and a biography is due out in October. Long after Kim Philby was exposed, le Carre was offered a meeting with him by the British secret service, but le Carre (whose cover Philby had blown resulting in le Carre's early retirement from British Intellgience) declined. In his eighties now, his last two novels, A Perfect Spy (said to be his most autobiographical) and the most recent text, A Delicate Truth, reinforce and further explore earlier obsessions and continue to leave no doubt that to meet betrayal and desperation with a sense of fatalism is the most honest course of action. Like Hawthorne, there is little light in his books, only a sounding of the darkness of man's heart, and the belated striving of his protagonists to understand and to transcend it. bill shermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04168365468808561496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7858229832723438711.post-9599526914134624952014-12-31T17:03:00.000-05:002014-12-31T20:39:48.786-05:00London, December 31, 2014I can't remember ever being so lonely as I am tonight. Here is a very tiny excerpt from "The Later Letters of Charles Olson and Frances Boldereff"<br />
<br />
<br />
"I don't know what my own future holds, and these have been desperate days - (you can't imagine, I shdn't think, what an <i>impossible</i> effort it is for a man like myself, finally <i>compulsive</i>, to live alone...& I am strained beyond endurance..."<br />
<br />
(Letter of 9 January 1968) <br />
<br />bill shermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04168365468808561496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7858229832723438711.post-82027821467127985212014-02-05T23:16:00.002-05:002015-01-11T14:22:16.220-05:00Return To Paradise : A Girl From The Taipai Valley, & other Melvilleanisms.. and literary interventions."I may succeed, perhaps, in particularizing some of the individual features of Fayaway's beauty, but that general loveliness of appearance which they all contributed to produce I will not attempt to describe."<br />
<br />
Melville, from <i>Typee</i><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
"All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event - in the living act, the undoubted deed - there, some unknown but reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask!"<br />
<br />
Ahab to Starbuck "The Quarter-Deck" - <u>Moby Dick</u> <br />
<br />
<br />
<i>"On the second day, a sail drew near, nearer, and picked me up at last. It was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan."</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
from <i> Epilogue</i> to <u>Moby Dick</u><br />
<u><br /></u>
<u><br /></u>
<u><br /></u>
<u>______________</u><br />
<u><br /></u>
(posted February 15th)<br />
<br />
<br />
STEPHEN CRANE<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
"This poor gambler isn't even a noun. He is a kind of adverb. Each sin is a result of a collaboration." ..... from "The Blue Hotel"<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
There was a man with a tongue of wood<br />
Who essayed to sing,<br />
And in truth it was lamentable.<br />
But there was one who heard<br />
The clip-clapper of the tongue of wood<br />
And knew what the man<br />
Wished to sing.<br />
And with that the singer was content.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
I saw a man pursuing the horizon;<br />
Round and round they sped.<br />
I was disturbed at this<br />
I accosted the man.<br />
"It is futile," I said,<br />
You can never - "<br />
<br />
"You lie," he cried,<br />
And ran on.<br />
<br />
<br />
_____________________________<br />
<br />
(posted February 18th/19th)<br />
<br />
<br />
"Melville...deserted the <i>Acushnet</i>, his first whaleship, at the Marquesas. He was one of eleven mutineers aboard his second, a Sydney ship the <i>Lucy Ann</i>, at Tahiti. Nothing is known of his conduct on the third, except that he turned up after it, ashore, at Honolulu. ..... Like Timon Melville found only disappointment. He lost Jack Chase, and Hawthorne, shyest grape, hid from him. In a poem of his later years Melville wrote:<br />
<br />
'To have known him, to have loved him<br />
After loneness long<br />
And then to be estranged in life<br />
And neither of us wrong<br />
Ease me, a little ease, my song.' "<br />
<br />
(Charles Olson, from <u>Call Me Ishmael)</u><br />
<u><br /></u>
<br />
<u><br /></u>
<u><br /></u>
<br />
(Maybe re: Hawthorne it was for the best. Perhaps Melville picked up the shadow of anti-semitism which does surface in his writing, from Hawthorne, who, in <i>The Marble Faun</i> manuscript under golden chain and lock and key in the British Museum, compares Jews to cockroaches. In the following century, most first generation modernists shared their dislike and distrust and even hatred of Jews, from Fitzgerald in <i>The Great Gatsby,</i> to T.S. Eliot's viciousness throughout his poetry and in his unexpurgated prose essays, to Gertrude Stein, whose anti-semitism after her rejection of her inherited Judaism, and her overt support of Hitler, has been whitewashed by many contemporary feminists and poets. Not even Pound in his writings or his broadcasts in Italy ever praised Hitler to the best of my knowledge. Of the Americans it was only Hemingway who was able to transcend his prejudices in this respect.<br />
<br />
In England, anti-semitism seems almost to be hard-wired, and the medieval massacre of Jews at York, has been obliterated from English history as "not part of our story" as one Englishman put it to me. Of course, in English religious education at a primary and secondary (high school) level, only Christianity and, more recently, Islam, are taught. Philip Roth in his "Christendom" chapter of his novel, <i>The Counterlife, </i>delineated the anti-semitism which has pervaded English culture. You might be hard-pressed indeed to name an English writer prior to WWII who did not share and perpetuate an anti-Jewish point of view.<br />
<br />
As Leslie Fiedler has written of encountering Shylock: "Shylock is the product of their guilt and fear, a stratagem for projecting what they must needs recognize as evil in themselves onto an alien Other....And how, after the experience of Hitlerism, is it possible not to be aware that even smoldering ashes of those myths can be blown into flame when will and circumstance conspire."<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Edward Dahlberg in <u>Can These Bones Live</u> writes: "Melville had come to deny woman as a planetary creature. In the brief pagan heyday in <i>Omoo, Typee, Mardi,</i> he believed he had moulded nude female cannibals; however, he had limmed insubstantial and aerated phantoms of sensuality, Fayaway and Yillah....In <i>Pierre</i> it was incest; but Isabel, the beloved of her brother Pierre, is an air-substanced leafy, bowered Yillah - only more Atlantic and fjord-like in speech and temper....What was Melville's quest? His insatiate hunger for absolutes, for the Platonic forms of gentleness, mercy and understanding, was taking him whither? In his pilgrimage for the "heart's virgin experience," Melville, in his last year, had conceived in <i>Billy Budd </i>pure Male manhood, but had drawn a vestal maiden in the likeness of one of Fra Angelico's seraphs." <br />
<br />
<br />
Olson again, in <u>Call Me Ishmael</u>: "The three great creations of Melville and <i>Moby-Dick</i> are Ahab, The Pacific, and the White Whale."<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
-----------------------------<br />
<br />
(posted March 1st)<br />
<br />
<br />
"Who knows what true loneliness is - not the conventional word but the naked terror? To the lonely themselves it wears a mask. The most miserable outcast hugs some memory or some illusion."<br />
<br />
"Do you understand what I say? Not one to go to. Do you conceive the desolation of the thought - no one - to - go - to? ..... 'How did this old man come here' he muttered, astounded." <br />
<br />
Joseph Conrad, <i> Under Western Eyes</i><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
--------------------------------------------------------<br />
<br />
(posted March 7th)<br />
<br />
"In the 'Withheld' Letter 27 he had laid out, in a resounding epistolary voice...the distinguishing thing of (his) <i><u>zoe</u></i>-life....The poet <i>sees</i> the connection between his own <u style="font-style: italic;">zoe</u>-life and geography, which is the purchase he had needed for Maximus to address the<i> </i><u style="font-style: italic;">bios</u>-life of the citizens of Gloucester....In the congruent mapping of 'spacial nature' he had found a way to express that which to Kerenyi is inexpressible, the thing that watches you in your drunken <u style="font-style: italic;">bios</u>-life, the intoxication of Merry as <i>Maximus IV V VI</i> opens."<br />
<br />
-----Jack Clarke in <u>intent.</u> (vol. 2 no, 4 / vol 3. no. 1) Winter/Spring 1991. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
___________________________<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />bill shermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04168365468808561496noreply@blogger.com