A century after Swinburne

If Swinburne’s two abiding memories of Eton were Greek prosody and the flogging block, is it surprising that he should have become both a masochist and a master-metrician?

review of  ‘The Age of Wonder’ by Richard Holmes

Much of the book is also devoted to Humphry Davy, whose reputation is multifaceted. He wrote poetry; he had lively friendships with some of the best-known writers of his day; he invented a lamp that would prevent methane gas from exploding and save the lives of countless miners. Best immortalized here, though, are Davy’s experiments with nitrous oxide, tests in which he eagerly served as guinea pig. Inhaling that substance gave him “a thrilling all over me most exquisitely pleasurable,” he recorded. “I said to myself I was born to benefit the world by my great talents...”

(cont.)

Orcadian fiddle music survives
in the high arctic

the last latticed leaf
of the HBC's

imperial tree, after
& century & a half the

viking stream
reduced to a trickle

& the rigid tripartite
of the reels stretched like ragas

the better to suit
the long dances

of mid-summer,
loosening by tallow light

messages
in knotted leather.

 




nice introduction to the life & music of Jimmie Rodgers

information about a new edition of Basil Bunting's Briggflatts
which has a CD & a DVD enclosed; they've posted a big bit of the DVD as well...

Local trees & c.

from "Joy", collages by Alison Yip

YouTube - Northern Soul - This England

Drummer Billy Hart on the day

Lee Morgan died...

an evening of Anthony Mann films on TCM tonight, including a couple I haven't seen--

The Last Frontier (1955)

The emotionally jittery and sublimely scenic The Last Frontier (1955) is the old west picture I speak of here, but what is it exactly? A Cold War commentary of military belligerence? A post-war noir confronting
the emotional disorder of returning soldiers seen through the front of a rugged mountainous setting? It is all of the above, with the added effect of what appears to be handheld camera movements, and demented if
not animalistic character plots and behavior—particularly from the movie's lead actor, Victor Mature, as the highly conflicted Jed Cooper....
"He's all id," my movie mate blurted out mid-show, a keen statement about a man unshaped by manners, motivated by drink, and prone to
irrational outbursts—childlike tantrums really—by the provocations of men in authority who contradict or disapprove of his ways...

Cimarron (1960)

Mann wasn't the obvious choice to shoot an epic film in 1960, and the suits at MGM, rightfully or not, would eventually be sorry they hired him...

A Letter from Hammertown to Robert Dunsmuir

Screw you
Scrooge McDuck,
Born near Kilmarnock,
You built Craigdarroch
but preferred a Hammock...

...how else


given the militarization of one's home space
but to reply in kind &

tactically, to return
smug valuation with superiority

& punch for punch,
till over each great crime is grown

a grove of alder
till over each great crime

grows a shade-spreading lime
that on a brown bench curled

I can sleep beneath until
two years after 2012 when it'll have been

a century since the bunch of us
last addressed our masters thus

in tones of such insolent rue
that their empire bled black & blue &

was forced to re-colonize
in forms a voortrekker

would recognize:
towns until then

bereft of a copper's tread
now patrolled by one of meathead

Bowser's "specials"
dredged up & barged over from Vancouver

pointed Maxim Guns to & fro
(to derision & innuendo)

but when you're in that corner trapped,
squared by someone else's map & no one

downhill to pass it along to anymore
& beyond that only Pasta, Saskatcha.

or Chimera, Alaska
that string of smoking islands

where Vico's giants
have dug condos into the sandstone

or a street in Honolulu
named for a nurse

from where Dick the mines inspector
& Farquhar his deep-pocketed admiral

return richer via Surrey's
crosswords & curries, their ship-in-a-bottle

aesthetic still operative
among the locals today

subject to arbitrary poking,
driving hummingbirds into the house

of your head, driving out
religion & solidarity

picnics on Shell Beach
on the islands off Shell Beach.

Local trees & Charlie

farewell to Gerry Gilbert 1936-2009, the great poet of Vancouver in the second half of the twentieth century. When David Bromige died last week I remembered that I'd had a number of conversations with him & Gerry in the kitchen of Gerry's place, called the "New Era Social Club", which consisted of a small two story house with warehouse space above, in a narrowish alley in the Japanese section of the Downtown Eastside, a couple of blocks off the water. This was in the early 80's, when Rob Johnson took the above portrait. The other photo is of how it looked last winter. Gone is the pear tree and the ivy-covered fence, gone too the hole through which one had very carefully to retrieve the key on a string. I stayed there a lot during that period, helping & hindering his work on his own poetry, his magazine BC Monthly & radiofreerainforest, his show on Co-op Radio. Whatever literary community I've ever been a serious part of had him at its center. I remember little (tennis? Ava Gardner? ) of the content of the conversations with David & Gerry but recall with great clarity David opposite me at the table, still-longish hair, a patterned shirt under a patterned vest, Gerry making pancakes, a pony-tailed short order cook, his vest limp pinstripe with a little bit of satin in the back. I forget thin men need that little extra warmth. Both men had bright, translucent eyes & used a lot of neat quick motions to both do & describe things & their exchanges had a musical, bantering, ping-pong lightness to them, a quality I used to call "zen", but with their neat beards & underlying toughness of wit it could sometimes be a bit Jacobean too...

Mike Scharf @ sustainable aircraft ...

Second Schädel

The land’s a pocket mirror; you like to hold it down

and catch flashes of yourself.

It’s teeming. Greenpoint burns off its relations.

It’s a rimless procession: the sun, unbound but forced to sphere,

tentacles marble, an absorptive French blue, with particles

rising and falling in tandems, lolling in arcs.

Walking past the plant on Meserole, foot

blanket tangles and lips come down, calcium white.

Steam comes out the windows. It smells of perc...

The stag cook book...

paprika, tablespoonful, Worcestershire sauce, onions, Welsh Rabbit, baking powder, parsley, teaspoonful, round steak, tomatoes, Mazola oil, double boiler, demi-glace, flour, deep dish, American cheese, cayenne pepper, skillet, burgoo, clove...

YouTube - New Age Steppers - Guiding Star

Op-Ed Contributor - Too Poor to Make the News - NYTimes.com

News | Peter Culley 2009 Mini-World Tour dates announced | New Star Books Publisher, Vancouver British Columbia Canada, Newstarbooks, catalogue

(above right, in Bangor, Maine with Kevin Davies)