HGBooks : order direct

 

For U.S. residents, here is a new and simple way to order some of my publications.  Please note : you can find out more details about each of these, as well as place international orders, at my author page @ Lulu.

Holy Fool (book) :

https://svc.lulu.com/?items=312cd7da-2bf4-4794-96a8-25328fb8e85e

Chapel Hill (book) :

https://svc.lulu.com/?items=3165f8bb-8f5b-4152-820e-3dbd932e5d32

One Grain of Salt (chapbook) : 

https://svc.lulu.com/?items=e953399d-a2b3-4ced-b424-7845448d32c2 

Green Mountains (chapbook) : 

https://svc.lulu.com/?items=5de0384b-0797-48fa-b548-6c4db271bbe0

Shield of Mnemosyne (chapbook) : 

https://svc.lulu.com/?items=602ec30f-270c-4951-a8ef-046d4d3574b5

Shady Library (chapbook) :

https://svc.lulu.com/?items=79550577-ae0c-440a-a4ae-764cf4a5b8c5

The Gate (chapbook) :

https://svc.lulu.com/?items=ce512ca2-6d26-415a-8943-dbe72448c691

The Ravlin House (chapbook) :

https://svc.lulu.com/?items=a2aba8e7-9ef1-400d-88a8-1d0905a8d994

The Mousetrap (chapbook) :

https://svc.lulu.com/?items=6ca431a4-b623-41d0-aab2-fd8208dfa2d4

Mayflower Table (chapbook) :

https://svc.lulu.com/?items=9e6ab544-4734-4746-aa1f-12422cab9920

Mirror Lake (chapbook) :

https://svc.lulu.com/?items=4ffe706d-dbe4-468f-9162-1f6274b2da4c

Way Stations (pocket-size booklet) :

https://svc.lulu.com/?items=0741903b-900f-406e-8e65-e6d29aa1a05d

In RI (pocket-size booklet) :

https://svc.lulu.com/?items=a7ba8592-edbc-42dd-9cf6-66a8a966ba4b

Island Road (pocket-size booklet) :

https://svc.lulu.com/?items=6f7ea95d-e218-4db9-8d11-d68586248330

Stubborn Grew (pocket-size booklet) :

https://svc.lulu.com/?items=3a2e174a-c5a5-4eec-adf1-6df0c3a34985

The Grassblade Light (pocket-size booklet) :

https://svc.lulu.com/?items=c3ae1d10-68c7-4f03-9767-68f14f04d326

July (pocket-size booklet) :

https://svc.lulu.com/?items=76c3c676-aeaa-4d20-83bd-b5f4bd4a1b3a

Forth of July (book – Stubborn Grew, Grassblade Light, and July, complete) :

https://svc.lulu.com/?items=41a60109-0799-4e47-aa93-51ffc1592a10

Dove Street (pocket-size book) :

https://svc.lulu.com/?items=60d64930-0f29-4d6c-adea-46423bd4128d

Rest Note (pocket-size book) :

https://svc.lulu.com/?items=1cb9f04b-d67b-40e0-a557-dd4dd56a8f2f

Lanthanum (book) :

https://svc.lulu.com/?items=e2bb30f3-2ffa-465b-9caa-12cc40bdf604

Restoration Day (book) :

https://svc.lulu.com/?items=c05b63ac-caa6-497b-86c8-83509bdc88ad

AND – MORE BOOK PUBLICATIONS : 

Three new recent books (The Green Radius, Parmenides in Minneapolis, and Shield of Mnemosyne) are also available from their publisher, Contubernales Books 

Also the 3-volume long poem, Ravenna Diagram , as well as my selected shorter poems, Continental Shelf, are both available from their publisher, Dos Madres Press 

Mockingbird : a poem

"I was washing outside in the yard..." : poem by Osip Mandelstam (1921)

 A poem by Osip Mandelstam, written in 1921.  Russian original, recited (ochin, ochin amateurishly) by me.

Epiphany

Notes on Poetry #1

It may be that every single assertion about poetry in general, poetry in the abstract, can be contradicted by another assertion. Poetry is as multifaceted as the language and speech from which it grows. Moreover, the word "poetry" itself suffers from many types of overuse (my own type very much included).

With these caveats... here goes, anyway.

Poetry is the blossom, the fruit, the harvest of the ear. Much has been made of its roots in imagery, dreams, the visual imagination. But every landscape "seen" in poetry is a vision interpreted by the ear. My first thought is of the immense quiet of the forest. The delicacy of muted signals and rustlings of small birds and animals, within that enveloping near-silence. The title of Eliot's book of essays, The Sacred Wood, comes to mind. Poetry sets itself apart, distinguishes itself, by means of protective rings (like a bird's nest) of quietness, hiddenness, remoteness.

I don't mean to suggest any kind of hermeticism or passive withdrawal from the brash, noisy parade – the tense moral battles – of time, history and humanity. No : rather poetry absorbs, reflects and transfigures all that loud aggressive vitality – by means of its superior powers of the ear. And these powers are rooted and refined in the vast, remote, "woodland" habitat – the quietness of the word.

Back to the future of blogging ?

I'm very belatedly trying to edit and update HG Poetics. Working on my "Blog List" sidebar, I've deleted some old or unavalaible links – and surprised to find that an extreme few of my longtime comrades from the Blogging Era are still there. Will try to explore what they're saying and doing. I've also updated the links to available HG books. Meanwhile I will ponder how to make HG Poetics more alive and interesting to Vexillologists, Poetry-Loving Expert Technicians, Distant Interlocutors, and other Readers of the Future.

Advent Found Poem (found just now)

     UNEXPECTED LIGHT

       courtesy of Dennis Overbye & NY Times (12.8.20)

Slight threads of Agnes Martin

touch their way across a night sea.

The universe is a shade too bright.

…more very faint galaxies or star clusters

     contributing to the background light.

The most likely explanation, he said…

    a less exciting possibility… “we messed up

    and missed a light source or camera

    artifact that we should have figured out.

    This is what I worry about the most.”

But how dark is dark? …the measurement

    had a 5 percent chance of being a fluke.

       “Your distant neighbor eating leftover turkey

    at three in the morning is not going to

    wake you up at night from the glare.”

A leafless oak with its arms thrown out

like a knot of knots in the arctic wind

– thin memory of warmth (hearth,

heartbeat).  Presumably, in an infinite

    static universe, every line of sight

        ends at a star, so shouldn’t the sky appear

    as bright as the sun?  But astronomers

    now know… But how dark is dark?

        2 sigma – far cry from gold standard

    for discovery of 5 sigma… zoomed past

Arrokoth, formerly Ultima Thule

(7.14.2015).  We imagine a manger

in drear December.  One ox-eyed

bare exile, burbling in a steaming barn

beneath caved-in roof… placid beasts, 

primitive smiles.  In the Darkness

    of Empty Space, Unexpected Light.

From the human heart steps the King

    of Fools… now her serene lowliness

nurses the Emperor of Poverty in peace.

         12.10.20