great article on ANDRE THE GIANT ,though it doesn't mention Samuel Beckett driving him to school.....

beat the heat with a bunch of racy pre-code musicals on TCM tonight, including

Hips Hips Hooray (1934)

Gold Diggers of 1933

Footlight Parade (1933) (with James Cagney!

Fashions Of 1934 (with Bette Davis!)

from The Vehicule Poets

For the Vehicule reading, Gerry pasted pages of poetry across the wall of the space. As the poems were pasted at eye height, he walked along the wall, reading. His poems were... recordings of his thoughts, inner conversations, reflections, self-centered but always in the moment, always coming back to the poem he's thinking, writing. Many of his poems are only a few words, a phrase, out of context, comic aphorisms, a "translation" of Basho's haiku, or the "independently coined" phrase PRONDL, from the "automatic gearshift on your car". His reading is sometimes conversational, sometimes forced out one syllable at-a-time. He was suave, with silk scarf, moustache and sideburns. 1978 and very much alive. Gerry Gilbert...

(polaroid by Lary Bremner)

Ontario, California & Oregon trees

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