Young Zack (Jonathan Richman)

Joseph Sikes & Carrie Losneck

Uncle Ian et al.

Sass & Zack

Avah & Owen

Fabiola & Esteban

Easter, 2012

[W. Benjamin: Every date from the sixteenth century trails purple after it. Those of the nineteenth century are only now receiving their physiognomy.]

Lilac incipience, quince bush blushing, I am
In this; No. Weare, 1956, Colburn's store; Armand and
Marcy's; lemons & eggs. An ash so big it can't but lift
One's thoughts to God. This run of Piscataquog shallows was
A millpond in living memory. Animate
The dust: tiny mammals with Algonkian names.

BANGALORE 1875

Before the myth. Sue Dickinson to the Springfield DAILY REPUBLICAN, for publication 18 May 1886.

The death of Miss Emily
E. Dickinson, daughter of the
late Edward Dickinson,
at Amherst on Saturday last
makes another sad inroad
upon the small circle so long
occupying the old family mansion.
It was for a long generation over-
looked by death, and one in
passing in and out there, could
but think of old fashioned times,
when parents and children
grew up to and passed maturity
together, in lives of singular
uneventfulness, unmarked by
sad or joyous crises. Very few in the
village knew Miss Emily per-
sonally, except among the older
inhabitants, although the fact
of her seclusion and intellectual
brilliancy was one of the familiar
Amherst traditions. There are many homes
among the classes into which
her treasures of fruit and
flowers and almost ambrosial
dishes for the sick and well
were constantly sent, that will
forever miss those dainty traces
of her unselfish devotion and be
moved afresh that she screened
herself from closer acquaintance.
As she passed on in life, her
sensitive nature shrank from much
personal contact with the world,
and more and more she turned
to her own large wealth of
individual resources, for companion-
ship – sitting henceforth, as some
one said of her, "In the light of
her own fire". Not disappointed
with the world, not an invalid
till within the past two years – not from
any lack of all embracing love,
and sympathy – not because she
was insufficient for any mental
work, or social career, her en-
dowments being so exceptional,
but the "mesh of her soul" as
Browning calls the body, was too
rare, and the sacred quiet of her
own home proved the native at-
mosphere for her worth and
work. All that must be inviolate.
One can only speak of
"Duties beautifully done" – of her
gentle tillage of the rare flowers
filling her conservatory, into
which, like the heavenly Paradise,
entered nothing that could
defile, and which was ever
abloom in frost or sunshine, so
well she knew her chemistries –
of her gentle tenderness to all
in the home circle – her gentle-
woman's grace, and courtesy to
all who served in house, and
grounds – of her quick rich re-
sponse to all who rejoiced, or
suffered at home, or among her
wide circle of friends the world
over. This side of her nature was
to her, the real side – this, the
entity in which she rested, so
simple and strong was her instinct
that a woman's hearth-stone is
her shrine. Her talk and her
writings, were like no one else,
and although she never published
a line, now and then some en-
thusiastic literary friend, would
turn love to larceny, and cause
a few verses surreptitiously obtained,
to be printed. Thus, and through
other natural ways, many saw
and admired her verses, and
in consequence frequently
notable persons paid her visits,
hoping to overcome the protest
of her own nature and gain a
promise of occasional contri-
butions at least to various
magazines. She withstood
the fascinations of Helen Jackson
who earnestly sought her
co-operation in a novel in
the "No Name Series", although
one little poem strayed in
some way into the volume
of verses in that edition.
Her pages would illy have
fitted even so attractive a
story as "Mercy Philbrick's
Choice", unwilling as the
public are to believe she
had no part in it: "Her
wagon was hitched to a star"
and who could ride or write
with such a voyager.
A Damascus blade
gleaming, and glancing
in the sun was her wit.
Her swift poetic rapture
like the long glistening
note of a bird one hears
in the woods in June at high noon,
but never can see. Like
a magician she caught
the shadowy apparitions of
her brain and tossed them
in startling picturesqeness
to her friends, who charmed
with their simplicity and
homeliness, as well as pro-
fundity, fretted that she
had so easily made palpable,
the tantalizing fancies forever
eluding their bungling
fettered grasp. So intimate
and passionate, her love of
Nature, she seemed herself a part
of the high March sky – the
Summer day and bird call.
Keen and eclectic in her
literary tastes, she sifted
Libraries to Shakespeare and
Browning – quick as lightning
in her intuitions, and analyses,
she seized the kernel in-
stantly, almost impatient
of the fewest words by which
She must make her revelation.
So her life was rich, and
all aglow with God and
immortality – with no creed –
no formulated faith, hardly
knowing the names of dogmas
she walked this life, with
the gentleness and reverence
of old saints, with the firm
step of martyrs who sing
while they suffer. How better
note the flight of this "Soul
of fire in a shell of pearl"
than by her own breathings
Morns like these, we parted
Noons like these, she rose.
Fluttering first, then firmer
To her fair repose.

May I trouble you dear
Sam to pardon untidyness of
this, for I am weary and sick.
Also to return this.
As ever yours – S.H.D

Will you have "gentlewoman"
printed as one word? not
with a hyphen –

Retour de la pêche aux huîtres

Bivalve women,
You gave me bones
And twisted this from
Sally-rods & withy. Fishers
Of men. Proud hips and
Bellies swallow us, belie a
Fictive swarm, the sunlit
World before, trees,
Shore and seas, the islands
Into sky. Thin vision-tissue, gently
Torn – that lighthouse, and the glare
Off sleek and swollen
Waves, white light of empty God
Behind the scene.

Я - Ахматова

For years I confused Saints Dominic and Bernard, to the grave detriment of my relationship with the latter's substantial & sparkling presence in The Perennial Philosophy. Sunset at Oak Hill Cemetery in Brewer, god-bodkin blood leaking up under black trees' bared teeth in the middle distance: Flannery O'Connor. Fannie Hardy Eckstorm is buried here, somewhere under all this Christmas snow. I can't find her today, my usual knack (which brought me & my bike pauselessly direct to Timothy Swan's white obelisk back in October, Northfield) falters. Walking the Joshua Chamberlain bridge back over the Penobscot Bangorward I'm singing "Kwe ya he no" and thinking on poor Jael Hilderbrand of Pleasant Point.

Arlington

Gemmage des Pins, autrefois

The soil is clay and its surface is wet everywhere, even the high ground, even after many nights of stars and wind. The river is huge and expressionless; the mountain-shapes that rise on its nether bank are only shapes, without the Gaudier-Brzeskan sculptural energy that inheres to our mountains. Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath drink martinis together in Boston, wanting to die. I corral language-powers into the various strands of my correspondence. These two things are common between Frank Speck and me: a working knowledge of modern Greek, and that "penny postcards comprise the larger part of his literary remains". Strunk & White say the period should go inside the quotation marks in this and any other case; I'm afraid British usage feels much more correct to me on this point. Minor treason. What a golden flower was Manhattan Island this morning. I walked buoyantly through it in spite of having been drinking last night till three with Raymond Marunas's ghost. The carillon at Grace Church on Broadway broke into sudden cumbrous song around noon, staggering in and out of key with massive clangor; it was the stone of the church itself that was ringing, and we were all rising with it into the richer light. On Fourth Avenue I handled but did not buy a clean copy of the 1955 Poems (E.D.), one hundred dollars. How many skulls around my neck already. These thick textures of māya, punctured and sewn; unsewn; reassembled in their original order by matching up the paper's stress-marks and stains.

Oakland Ave

Your two Julia Child volumes pressed up against my Paul Robeson 78s; the silver coil of the stove-door handle; your Canadian guitar; the rug from my brother's boyhood; the socks you knit me.

Caligo

Black Book

Spanish bullseye: Diana.

NYRB: "Cavafy, a happy practicioner of samizdat..."

Genetic event of apple extends into time by persistence of tree life, or by human grafting culture, or by a rootsucker's taking over from dead or moribund tree.

"Numb as a hake," old downeast language.

1804 1 billion
1927 2 billion
1960 3 billion
1974 4 billion
1987 5 billion
1999 6 billion
2011 7 billion
Julia says it's obvious why no one ever talks about it.

Picking with Jason: springtime snowmelt thrills, ripe autumn's fruit.

The finite Atom infinite
That forms thy circle's centre-dot

Cerebral/spinal/genital matter one continuum.

Peggy on tofu: "It was like chicken but it wasn't chicken it was that other stuff they use."

Columbus card traditionally played as triumph of reasoning cognition over murky phantasms of medieval concept of world; in fact Admiral C. (in name & spirit of dull, blind, protocapitalist prerogatives of the flat world) ruptured stale certainties of boundaried "known" of Europe and precipitated its opening to wonder. (Weschler's book on Museum of Jurassic Technology)

"The pathologists recommend a prebloom schedule involving a tank mix of mancozeb at 3 pounds per acre plus captan-80 at 1.5 to 3 pounds per acre."

Non's fitt to live
But who is fitt to die

tu sú fotky

Black Book

Charles Leland, 1884: "Nothing is so contemptible in Indian eyes as a want of dignity and idle, loquacious teasing; therefore it is made in the myth the sin which destroyed their race. The tendency of the lower class of Americans, especially in New England, to raise and emphasize the voice, to speak continually in italics and small and large capitals, with a wide display, and their constant disposition to chaff and tease, have contributed more than any other cause to destroy confidence and respect for them among the Indians."

Demetrios Latchis from Καστάνιτσα to Hinsdale, 1901.

"Saupoudrez les pommes de sucre et parsemez-les de noisettes de beurre."

John Abbot was in Jacksonborough, Scriven County, Georgia. "All traces of this old town have now passed away."

"Trust not in uncertain Riches, but in the Living God."

Odzihozo turned himself into Rock Dunder.

Scudder calls the endearing Lycaenid habit of rubbing together the hind wings a "presumed stridulation".

New Sweden 1638 at the mouth of the Delaware River.

Father John Babst on Indian Island, middle 19th century, a true christian.

Haincty/dicty.

William Wood on oysters in New England's Prospect: "This fish without the shell is so big, that it must admit of a division before you can well get it in your mouth."

Alewives, shad, salmon anadromous; eels catadromous.

Detroit Greeks: feather bowling.

Networking within the nationwide Indian entertainment industry of the late 19th century seeded the general Native American Consciousness movement of the late 20th century.

People not enjoying conversation; listening only in ego-tension and defensively; stopping up any gap with further self-babble.

Banana esters.

Dedham schoolyard: "An evil plot to kill Mr. Winters."

Fannie Hardy Eckstorm: "He would have broken all the commandments seriatim if that would have helped the logs along."

Kateri Tekakwitha's village was in present-day Ayriesville, NY. She moved to Caughnawaga in the 1670s. Venerable in 1943; canonized 1980.

The Presumpscot formation. Marine clay; blanket of fine-ground gracial silt. Tempered with rocks or vegetable fibre and worked into cookpots with dentate decoration and a pointed bottom so as to sit in bed of fire.

The alternate reality reigning in African cities where charitable organizations have sent the T-shirts that were printed up with the wrong Superbowl or electoral results.

Bruce: "I've come to be very much against zoos. The only thing I ever liked in a zoo, ever, was a seal in Pittsburgh one time."

In 1876 John Ross and his (Penobscot) West Branch Drive were contracted to take all the logs on the Connecticut from headwaters to Hartford during a severe drought.

Beethoven opus 132: Hurdy-Gurdy.

"I am death, who distributes the fruit of all action."

“Bessie Smith was the one Classic Blues artist to outlive the genre, the one artist whose work justifies the entire style.”

It is sown in Weakness
It is raised in Power

“I never travel without my diary; one should always have something sensational to read on the train.”

Trains were more dangerous in those days. Not that there were more accidents – in fact there were far fewer. What was in danger was rather a body's sense of its own limits; its simple, unproblematic position within time and space. For every train-car that clacked its wheels over the seams that punctuated the rails just across from the grassy, trashy spot outside Athens where I used to loiter aspiringly near the crouching knots of gypsies, my heart had an ache. For every ache my heart had, ten butterfly worms complied with their ancient tendency and took on powdery wings.